


The Story of Leon

by zephayrie



Category: Just a Little Lovin'
Genre: 1980s, Anal Sex, BDSM, Based on a LARP, Bisexual Male Character, Blow Jobs, Character Death, Death, Disco, Gay Sex, HIV/AIDS, LARPing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 13:32:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 58
Words: 47,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12212253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zephayrie/pseuds/zephayrie
Summary: In the 1970s, Leon was the king of disco. But now he's watching disco fade into the 80s, and his career along with it. Sex and drugs are a lifestyle, but when he finally finds love in his lonely life, they will be the very things that end it.Desire. Fear of Death. Friendship.There are hundreds of stories at Mr. T's party. This one is Leon's.





	1. Leon

**Author's Note:**

> Also published by the author at discoleon.wordpress.com

His name is Leonard Fontaine, but to all the world he is known simply as Leon.

In 1974 he was on top of the world. He was 26 years old, and "I Was Made for Dancin'" was topping the charts. He wore white pants without shirts, his hair flowed over his shoulders, and he made love to the microphone. He could have had his pick of women, had he wanted them. He did have his pick of men. Many men. As many as he wanted.

Now it's 1982, and he is 34. It's not so old, except that it is. He's too old to cruise the clubs of hot young men in tight jeans, too young to be one of the silver foxes. His hair is cut short in a futile attempt to mask the graying temples, and he wears a loose shirt to cover the beginning of a paunch. Purple shades and a mustache hide the lines on his face and protect eyes made sensitive by too much coke. It's been two years since he had a hit single, and a weak one at that. Those two years have been hard.

But he's here tonight, at Mr. T's big gay 4th of July party. He's still on invite lists, still surrounded by admirers. He headlines at Studio 54, and even if he isn't the one getting approached anymore, nobody turns him down.

There's a pretty young thing on his arm, a boy dressed in leather pants and a harness. Leon doesn't like to think of Chain as a rented boyfriend... more like a pet, someone he feeds and walks and buys treats for. There's no love between them, but neither of them have any illusions on that front, and so that's alright.

Here at Saratoga, they're playing Dolly Parton's Star Spangled Banner to kick off the party. Leon joins in, letting Chain hear his voice. It's still silken, and he soars up to the high notes along with Dolly.

He'll need that later, when he surprises them all.

_Oh say does that Star Spangled banner yet wave,  
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!_

The song comes to an end, hands come down from hearts, and Mr. T turns to address his guests. "Welcome back to the party everyone!" He is older amongst this crowd as well, a mid-40s gay WASP clad in khaki shorts and straw hat and Hawaiian shirt. But where Leon shrouds himself in regalia of the past, Mr. T has draped himself with charisma and power and influence that make him irresistible. "And thanks for coming out this year!"

This is the second of Mr. T's famous parties to take place at the Saratoga Center, a former rehab center for children with cancer, high in upstate New York. The Saratoga survivors have been coming here for years for their annual get-together, but when Mr. T heard about the place, he somehow wrangled a deal with them to let him relocate his party to the sprawling, secluded campground. And of course his secretary Pen had to come with him, which meant inviting friends from her lesbian circles, just so she wouldn't be bored.

Last year the groups didn't mingle much, the gays and lesbians keeping each other at wary arms' length, and the Saratoga people avoiding all of them. This year might be different, as faces that were foreign last year become more familiar and the party attendees reconsider one another. Time has yet to tell.

"I don't know all of you nearly as well as I should," Mr. T is saying, "but I'm sure we'll fix that before the end of the night." At this a chorus of cheers and wolf whistles rises from the crowd, and Mr. T grins even as he shouts to be heard. "Anyway! Take care of each other, and clean up after yourselves. I'm not your daddy; if you want that, talk to Steven." He favors the leather-clad gentleman who has just raised the flag with an appreciative look, and the crowd howls some more. "Let's have some fun!"


	2. Mingling

It’s impossible to miss Diego in the crowd… Leon’s son shines like a beacon. No surprise there; his mother had been beautiful, even if Leon could only recognize that truth objectively. She was a one-time experiment, a confused teen’s desperate attempt to prove himself straight before accepting the inevitable. He hadn’t really thought of Esmerelda again for years, until the day he got a letter telling him he had a 16-year-old son. A son who now stands amongst the beautiful people at Mr. T’s party.

Leon still isn’t sure what to think when he lays eyes on his boy. Pride mixes with confusion, jealousy with regret, amazement with defensiveness. He never thought anyone would know about his fling, and after so many years as an icon of gay pride, suddenly he’s finding himself questioned. How does a gay man have a son?

What’s done is done. No way to go but forward.

“Diego!” he says with false bravado, approaching the boy with Chain in tow. “I didn’t even know you’d be here!” He pulls Chain a little more forward. “Meet my son,” he says. His smile and the warmth in his tone aren’t entirely faked.

Chain’s eyebrows raise fractionally. “I didn’t know you had a son!” They briefly shake hands. Leon tries, and fails, not to watch how long the touch lingers.

“Oh yes,” Leon says. “It was in all the papers. Our touching reunion.” He lets go of Chain and moves to throw an arm around Diego’s shoulders. “And just as gay as me! It really does run in the family.”

He’s looking away, and doesn’t see the pained expression that flashes over Diego’s face. “Don’t worry,” he goes on, oblivious. “I’ll introduce you around. You’re going to be swimming in men tonight.” A quick squeeze, and then he moves away again. “Speaking of which, I’m going to mingle. You all enjoy yourselves.” He gives Chain a possessive kiss before releasing him, and admires the leather baby’s ass as he walks away.

There are so many faces, new and old. He spots another young one and heads in his direction. “I don’t think we’ve met,” he says. “Leon.” He waits for recognition.

“Oh. Eli.” The boy seems a little distracted.

Leon gives him a flirtatious smile. “You’ve heard of me, of course. Disco isn’t dead,” he adds quickly. “Never let ’em tell you it is!” He waits a beat. “And how do you know Mr. T?”

“I don’t, much,” Eli says. “I came here with my professor. Abner.”

“Oh, of course! Abner,” Leon says. He’s seen the older man around at this party and others. They aren’t really acquainted, but Abner’s writing is known even in his circles within the New York gay scene. “Are you another student of poetry?”

“Comparative literature, actually.”

“What does that mean? You… compare things?”

Eli’s smile is shy, self-conscious. “Yeah, basically. Look at the differences and write about them. Analyze and criticize social and cultural expression across boundaries and within literary traditions.”

The conversation is already over Leon’s head. “In other words, you mostly criticize other people’s writing.”

The jab doesn’t really seem to land with Eli. “Yes, and write about it. And I do my own writing as well, building on the concepts in new works.”

Leon can’t seem to help himself; his smile is patronizing. “I’m sure that’s fascinating to read,” he says. There’s a brief uncomfortable pause, but Leon knows how to smooth those over. He reaches into his pocket for a joint, lights it up, then offers it to Eli, who accepts easily. They toke up, both streaming smoke over their heads with the ease of familiarity.

It’s around then that Enrique slides up. “I see you’re already getting started.” He takes off his hat and reaches into it for small baggies of powder and pills: coke and quaaludes. He offers them to Leon. “First round is free.”

That’s a bit of a relief; Leon is already into the Studio 54 bartender for a few hundred. “Nice.” No sooner are the pills in hand than he’s offering them to Eli, then more men who wander into his vicinity. Names and faces begin to slide together as the chemicals take effect.

“Leon,” he says to man after man. “Leon, yes, _that_ Leon. Disco isn’t dead; never let ’em tell you it is!”


	3. Disco Isn't Dead

It's becoming a mantra. "Disco isn't dead," he says to everyone he encounters. "Never let 'em tell you it is!"

In a way, he believes this. His last hit was only two years ago. "YMCA" is still a staple at every party coast to coast, people are still dancing the hustle. He could keep disco relevant, if he really tried.

But a new craze is sweeping the nation, and it's not so far from the disco sound he already knows. Strip out the funk, add in the new electronica, and suddenly you have Hi-NRG, the thing that's getting feet on the floor.

And this is what Leon knows: he's ready. It's a secret, the thing he's going to reveal tonight. He may be older, but he's not gone, and this new single... well, it's perfect. They'll see. Soon he'll be back on top.

He holds a fingertip of coke up to his nose and snorts. No harm in a bump to keep himself going.

For the space of a skipped heartbeat, the world is more vibrant. Colors flare, smells intensify, sounds reverberate in his head. One in particular cuts through, a younger man's slightly arrogant tone. "It's not just _music_ ," the voice is saying. "It's, it's, it's - it's _poetry_ , it's, it's - new wave. It's about the soul, and heaviness, and, and, and - and _atmosphere_. I'm, I'm, uh - I'm, I'm writing lyrics that will make people _feel_."

Leon turns toward it. There's a boy, all in black, his face streaked with glitter and his lips painted dark. He's wearing a Beethoven wig, tied back with a silk ribbon, and his shirt is open at his slim neck. He gesticulates enthusiastically with his hands while he talks, and rocks on the balls of his feet like he's poised to take flight. He radiates energy and dark sex appeal.

A moment later, recognition dawns. This is Rain, of Urban Renaissance. Of course. They've played Studio 54 once, though the audience seemed more confused than appreciative. Next to him is the keyboard player, Simon. He's handsome in his own way, but where Rain fair vibrates with exuberance, Simon seems to suck the light from the air around himself. His arms are crossed over his leather-clad chest, and he scowls in silence while Rain babbles, seeming to trip over his own words in his rush to stay ahead of his thoughts.

Leon approaches.

"Oh hey, hey," Rain says, looking up at him. "Leon, right? Yeah, yeah, I know you. Disco king. Yeah."

"You bet," Leon says, and flashes his star grin. "Disco isn't dead; never let 'em tell you it is!"

Rain's eyebrows quirk. "Sure, sure. Disco, it's, it's, it's the, uh, the - the music of dance. And, and, I - I _appreciate_ that." He keeps glancing away then returning his eyes to Leon's with focused intensity. "What we're doing, y'know, we, we - uh, we, we wouldn't be there without disco. We're _building_ on it, we're, we're - we're _post_ -disco, we're the _future_." He looks away again and runs his hand over the back of his head, suddenly seeming self-conscious.

"Huh." Leon pauses to consider what to say to this. "Well, disco _is_ dance music, right? It makes you feel good. What you're talking about... I mean, people don't want to feel dragged down with all that heavy shit. How are you gonna sell that? People want to dance, not think."

"It's not about, about - about _commercialism_ ," Rain says with renewed fervor. "It's, it's - it's _art_. It's _authentic_." He half-turns away again, then rebounds to jab a finger at Leon. "And, and, this - this is going to _get_ people dancing. My lyrics, they're, they're - they're only half the equation. It's about the _music_."

"Okay," Leon says. "Sure."

Rain's demeanor shifts in a heartbeat. "Let me guess," he says, face darkening. "You believe the rumors?"

"The - sorry, what? What rumors?"

"That I'm fucking my brother?" Rain puts both hands behind his head and spins around, his expression one of helpless frustration.

"What? _No!_ That's... Jesus. That's as disgusting as thinking I might be fucking my son." Very briefly, the thought occurs to him that this just might be the sort of thing the aspiring artist would make up as a publicity stunt, but he dismisses it just as quickly. Rain doesn't strike him as the type to be that sleazy. "I don't know where you heard it, but I sure as hell haven't."

"Well, well - well, it's _not true_." The finger jabs again, emphasizing the words, and Rain looks sideways at Simon. "It's _not_ ," he repeats, and Simon shrugs. It's the most communication Leon has seen from him yet.

"Yeah," Leon says. "Okay." He slides his fingers into his pants and withdraws the packet of quaaludes. "You look like you could use something to relax."

"Oh, no, no," Rain says immediately, his hands going up defensively before him. "No, uh - I, I, y'know, I need my energy. For the stage."

"Right. Okay." Now he takes the joint from behind his ear, holds it up instead. "Something milder?"

Rain considers for a moment, then takes the joint. "Thanks," he says, lighting up. "So, so, uh - are you performing tonight?"

Leon feels his lips curl in a small, secretive smile. "Oh, yes."

"Some of your hits?"

The smile widens. "Oh," Leon says airily. "You'll see."

"Well," Rain says. He turns his face upward to blow smoke into the air. "Well, I'm, I'm - I'm looking forward to it."

"Then I'll see you there." Leon waves off the joint when Rain tries to give it back. "Keep it," he says. "You could definitely use the buzz." And he walks away.


	4. The Saratoga Pact

At the far end of the campground, a knot of people are clustered under the trees around something unseen. Leon has rejoined Enrique and Sorrento, the manager at Studio 54 and an occasional lover. They're passing around a fresh joint. "What's going on down there?"

"Oh, that's the Saratoga Pact," Sorrento says. He sips, holds, then lets the smoke dribble between his lips and curl over his head. "They all survived cancer as kids or some shit. Come up here every year to see each other."

"Yeah, yeah," Leon says. "They were here last year. But what are they _doing_?"

Sorrento shrugs. "I heard they were digging something up, but fuck if I know what."

There's a whoop, and Leon turns to see a tall man wearing little more than a pair of ass-hugging shorts and a chain of flowers on his long golden hair go streaking past them, with two more laughing men chasing after him. Leon's eyes glue themselves to the shorts as they run away. "Good lord," he says, leaning over to watch. "That is one gorgeous man."

"Mmmmmm-hmm," Sorrento agrees. "Too bad he's attached to Jerrod."

More familiar faces are walking past, milling around the main cabin where delicious smells are beginning to drift out from Pepper's makeshift on-site diner. Nate, the Queen of New York; Daniel, aka Lady Verona; Mr. T, the man himself. Leon favors each with a greeting in turn. Daniel simply snubs him with a disdainful smirk, but Nate and Mr. T both stop to chat, exchanging cheek kisses and small talk.

"Will you be performing tonight?" It's the question on everyone's lips.

"Oh yes," Leon tells each of them, but he just smiles mysteriously and says, "You'll see," when they inquire about his number.

A short time later, the folks at the far end of the field start making their way back to the main cabin. Ever one to schmooze, Leon moves to greet them as they filter in. One in a kaftan, his hair drawn up in a topknot, approaches him.

"Welcome," he says in a voice that seems to embrace Leon, bringing to mind flowing water and fragrant incense. In fact, the scent of warm patchouli drifts gently from his skin. "I am Kohana."

"Leon. So... what's all this 'pact' stuff going on down there?"

Kohana's smile is serene. "We are all survivors of cancer," he says, "who come here every year to renew the promise we made each other as children. To live life, and embrace each day as a gift." He looks over his shoulder and holds out his arm to a slender woman with long red hair that swings around her hips. "Joani," he calls, "come meet Leon."

The way Joani moves can only be described as a glide. She is grace given form, her smile beatific, her voice melodious. "Welcome." She enfolds Leon's hand in both of her own. "You must be with Mr. T's party."

"This is my wife," Kohana says while Leon nods. "You might say she's the spiritual leader of our group."

Leon keeps nodding. "Cool."

Laughter touches the corners of Joani's eyes as her smile deepens. "I'll be offering a workshop on Tantra later," she says. "All are welcome."

It's at this moment that the bell begins ringing, summoning all to the dinner Pepper and her crew have prepared.

"Okay, sure," Leon says, lying with practiced ease. "I'll think about it."


	5. The Prophet

As the crowd begins filtering toward the main cabin, Leon finds himself alongside a distinguished-looking older gentleman. His rumpled hair is silvering but still thick, and his slender frame is nearly swallowed by a snowy white linen tunic belted over flowing linen pants of the same blinding hue. With his hemp sandals, he resembles nothing quite so much as a biblical prophet, stepped straight from the sands of Galilee.

“Well hello, Leon,” Abner says as they fall into step. The two have little more than a passing acquaintance, but both have been to Mr. T’s parties in the past.

“Abner! Hey man, it’s good to see you. Hey, I think I ran into one of your students earlier.”

“Oh? Which one might that be?”

“Cute kid, kinda shy, talks a lot? Eli, I think?”

“Ahhh, yes.” Abner looks pleased. “I hope he didn’t bore you to death.”

“He was… a little over my head,” Leon admits. “He was telling me something about how he compares writing to other writing and then criticizes it?”

Abner snorts. “Poorly. I’ll be sure to chastise him for showing off.”

“Eh, don’t do that! I think I helped loosen him up a little.” They move closer to the cabin doors. “Anyway, I thought you were a poet. But you’re teaching him, um… comparative literature?”

“Well, of course, poetry is merely one aspect of the creative sphere of literature. We all have our individual areas of interest, and my role merely is to steer and shape and guide him in the pursuit of his passion.” Abner turns to survey the loose knots of men strung along the path to the cabin, looking for his contemporaries. “Eli’s focus is on comparative literature. Jerrod’s is on rhetoric. Rain,” he says with a tiny scoff, “likes to come to our meetings and try to convince us his lyrics have some deeper meaning for society.”

Leon bursts out laughing. “I was just talking to Rain. He was pretty happy to tell me about why disco is dead and he’s bringing on the wave of the future.”

“Oh, that pretentious little shit. What else did he tell you?”

“Well, again, a lot of it sort of went over my head…”

“Yes, that’s because Rain doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.” Abner focuses intently on Leon’s eyes as he speaks, breaking gaze only to blink owlishly. “Listen, disco will never die as long as old fags like us are still around. Disco is our music. It represents the triumph of the gay man over the heteronormative oppression of rock and roll, the reclamation of dance as free expression of sexuality, a rallying cry by the marginalized in the face of the dominant paradigm that tries to keep us in the closet.”

Leon blinks for a moment, then pumps his fist in the air. “Hell yeah! Disco isn’t dead. Never let ’em tell you it is!” He claps Abner on the back as they move through the cabin doors.

“So, what else did our precious Rain have to say?” Abner starts to ask, but at that moment Chain slips up next to Leon and snuggles in against his side. Leon turns his head to give him a quick kiss on the mouth and wraps his arm around the boy’s waist, letting his fingers trail over the warm bare skin there.

“You found the angel,” Chain says.

“I think you just found me,” Leon says with a wink, but Chain ducks and shakes his head, smiling shyly.

“He means me,” Abner says. “He’s been calling me ‘angel’ all evening.”

“Because you’re a vision in white.” Chain looks up coyly at the poet through his thick dark lashes.

“I think you look more like a guru,” Leon puts in.

Abner gives them both a self-deprecating look. “I look like a poor old poet who dressed himself in his bedsheets because he can’t afford anything like these fabulous gold pants or this leather harness.”

“You look like a visionary,” Leon says, but Abner holds up both hands.

“Please, I can’t possibly accept such undeserved and gratuitous adulation,” he says. “I am but an aging relic, satisfied merely to be present among all this young and succulent flesh that old men such as myself may admire, if no longer sample.”

Leon can’t help thinking the poet is selling himself overly short, but the three of them have reached the serving table, and Abner assembles a plate and slips away to join the literary circle before Leon finishes fussing with his salad. Seeing an open seat with his son and their friends from Studio 54, he leaves the professor to school Rain about disco, and moves toward whatever the night holds next.


	6. A Phone in a Briefcase

Sorrento slides down his bench a bit to make room for Leon as he joins them, but doesn’t say anything; his attention, along with everyone else’s, is on a heavyset man in a teal suit at the center of the other side of the table.

“It’s going to completely revolutionize communications,” Teal Suit is saying. “You’ll be able to call anyone from anywhere. Think about it – payphones will become totally obsolete.” He pauses to slurp up an errant spaghetti noodle, and wipes sauce from his short auburn beard.

Enrique has his chin in one hand, leaning on the table with his elbow and staring hard at Teal Suit. “So it’s like… like a car phone?”

The man is still chewing a mouth full of food, so a younger, nebbish-looking man sitting next to him pipes up. He’s wearing a straw Panama hat, white with a black brim, and seems to half-disappear behind Teal Suit’s elbow. “Not really,” he says. “Well, I mean, sort of. Yes. But not just in your car. You’ll be able to carry it with you. In a case.”

Leon sets his napkin down and rises to bend across the table and offer his hand. “Leon.”

“Oh,” says the younger one. “I’m Ike. And this – ”

“Ruben McHallow,” the other cuts in. “Of Transatlantic Technologies.”

“Cool,” Leon says. Sitting back down, he takes a forkful of spaghetti then talks around it, oblivious to the disregarded social nicety. “What is that?”

“We’re a telecommunications company.”

“Oh, okay. Like, phones and shit.”

Ruben chuckles. The sound could be condescending, but falls perfectly into the space where it could just as easily be dismissed as misinterpretation. “Yes,” he says smoothly. “Like phones and shit. We’re bringing a new mobile phone to market, something so small it can be carried anywhere.”

“And you, Ike, you work for this… Transa…”

“Oh, yes, I – ”

“Ike is my graphic designer,” Ruben cuts in again. “At Transatlantic Technologies. He’s doing some lovely branding work for our upcoming product.” A look of affection from the older man to the younger suggests something more than just a working relationship, and Ike looks down at his plate, seeming to grow flustered.

“So,” Sorrento prods, “it’s a phone that you don’t have to plug in?”

“That’s right!” Ruben seems pleased. “And we’ve miniaturized it to the point where the whole thing can be carried in a single briefcase. I patented the technology.”

Leon feels his brow furrowing. “But… how does it get on the phone lines?”

“It doesn’t. It uses… call it radio waves.”

“But then how does it know what phone to go to?”

“Well, it’s like your radio. There are channels, so to speak. The signal itself doesn’t need to know where to go, it goes in all directions at once. The receiving phone picks it up, because it can only pick up a single frequency, and each signal is encoded for the specific device that can pick it up.”

Leon looks around in both amazement and mild alarm. “You mean there are phone calls here? Right now?”

Sorrento gives him an exasperated look. “Yes. Just like there are radio waves here. You can’t see them and they don’t hurt you.”

For a while the only sound at the table is chewing. Eventually Enrique speaks up again. “So they can’t call normal phones?”

“Come on, man,” Sorrento says. “That’d be pretty fucking useless. ‘Oh hey, I’ve got this phone that can only call four other people.’ That’s gonna catch on.”

“Fuck you,” Enrique retorts. “I don’t know about these radio wave things, but I’m pretty sure my phone doesn’t pick them up.”

“No, it’s a reasonable question, actually.” Ruben says. “And the answer is yes, you can call regular phones, but the how is, honestly, more complicated than you probably care to hear. It has to do with switches and transmitters and receivers and quite a bit of revolutionary technology.”

“Well.” Leon uses the last of his garlic bread to mop the plate clean of sauce and stuffs it into his mouth. “That all sounds pretty awesome. I’ll have to get one when they come out.”

“I’m afraid they will be quite expensive at first,” Ruben says. “The technology is still quite new.”

“That’s okay,” Leon responds flippantly. “I’m good for it.”


	7. Trouble in the Skye

Leon gets up and takes his plate to the kitchen. When he returns, Ruben and Ike have departed, and Rain has taken their place, along with his brother Skye, the band’s frontman and lead singer. Skye is now in Leon’s former seat, so he goes around the table and sits down next to Rain.

Rain doesn’t nod so much as give a barely-perceptible incline of his head. “Leon.”

“Rain.”

They’re not quite frosty, but not quite friendly either.

“Have you met my brother? Skye.” His mouth twists wryly. “Our parents were hippies.”

Skye offers his hand across the table, an effeminate caress of fingertips rather than an actual handshake. It seems appropriate considering his appearance: slim, almost waifish, with golden-brown hair brushed up into waves that curl and crash over his head, high sharp cheekbones made even sharper with bold crimson streaks, and eyes outlined with thick lines of silver and black. His voice and smile are warm as he briefly squeezes Leon’s fingers.

“I’ve seen you at Studio 54,” he says. “You’re the disco king.”

For some reason Leon doesn’t feel like repeating his mantra again in front of Rain. “Yeah.”

“Oh, you have to come to our after party, backstage.” Skye shoots his brother a look with raised eyebrows and pursed, pouty lips.

“Oh my god.” Rain closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Can’t you just let Nate throw the goddamn after party?” His voice is flat and measured, with none of the bubbling energy that had him tripping over his words earlier in the evening. “How do you expect us to pay for it?”

“You’ll figure it out,” Skye says brightly. “We need to keep our publicity going!” He suddenly twists his head, birdlike, to catch someone’s eye at the end of the table. “T!” he calls, then briefly turns back to his brother. “Sorry, I have to run.” No sooner are the words out than he’s jumped up to embrace Mr. T. The two walk off, Skye snaking his hand around Mr. T’s elbow, their heads bending together conspiratorially.

“Jesus Christ.” Rain buries his face in his hands.

Sorrento slides over to put his arm around Rain’s shoulders. “Listen,” he says, “we can help with the after party. Enrique’s got the hookup.”

Rain raises his head fractionally. “We’re not doing an after party,” he says. His tone is soft, but forceful. “Skye doesn’t just get to have whatever he wants. Besides, it’s Club Diamond’s backstage. Nate should be hosting it, not us.”

“No, hey,” Leon says. “You want an after party, you should do an after party. I can help you out too.” Personally he doesn’t especially care who the party is credited to; any space where the drugs flow even more freely than they already are will make picking up men even easier.

“I don’t want an after party.” Rain’s head snaps the rest of the way up. “I’m not doing this for parties, or, or, or – publicity, I’m, I’m – I’m trying to, to, to – to make art.” His stammer re-emerges as his energy rises. “I’m not, I’m not – I’m not like you,” he says, abruptly turning to look at Leon. “I want to, to, to – to do something authentic.”

Leon feels his temper flare; he smirks. “Sure,” he says, giving his tone a cutting edge. “You go on and do art. I’ll be over here sobbing on my pile of money.”

“Does, does that – does that feed your, your – your soul?” Rain’s upper lip curls.

“Fuck no.” He doesn’t even pretend to think about the answer. “I don’t need it to. I give people what they want, I give them dancing music and a good time, and the shit I can buy with the money it makes me? That feeds my soul.”

Silence stretches between the two for a seemingly endless moment.

Rain finally breaks it. His voice, when he speaks, is strange: soft, low, wistful, frustrated, yet at the same time, teasing. “I guess that’s what happens when you get old.”

“Guess so.”

“Well.” He leans in, suddenly companionable. “You, you – you are still pretty cute, Leon. Even if you are old.”

Out of a galaxy of things Leon might have expected Rain to say, this would never have been among them. He takes his sunglasses between his fingertips and slowly lowers them, showing his eyes to someone for the first time that night. The two lock gaze, and it occurs to Leon that it’s been a long time since he really looked into someone’s eyes. Abruptly, he wonders who the last person might have been to see that his are green.

“Hell,” he says. “You’re pretty cute too. Maybe we don’t need to see eye-to-eye to _see_ eye-to-eye.”


	8. Tantra

Leon needs a proper line, not just a fingerful. He heads to the restroom, already fumbling the baggie and a card and a dollar bill from his pockets. Along the way he passes one of the kitchen staff – Howard, he thinks – kneeling before a leather daddy in the pantry. The former is frantically undoing the latter’s belt.

Unperturbed, Leon nods at them. “Gentlemen.” They ignore him.

When he’s finished he heads back to the cabin proper. The dinner crowd is gone, but Chain, Abner, and Jerrod are sitting at one of the tables chatting. Leon joins them.

“Hello again Leon,” Abner says. “Jerrod has just been encouraging us to attend this Tantra workshop that Joani is teaching.”

Leon looks at the faces of the other two. “And you’re… thinking of  _going_?”

“I heard,” Chain says, “that you can have sex for hours.”

“I can already have sex for hours,” Leon says with a waggle of his eyebrows, and Abner high-fives him.

“No, you can have sex for hours with one person without coming.”

Skeptical looks are exchanged all around. “That doesn’t sound especially appealing, to be honest.”

Jerrod waves a hand. “No, no… it’s more like you can have an  _orgasm_  for hours.”

There’s a long moment of silence. Then all four men stand up.

The workshop is taking place in a cabin at the furthest end of the camp, near where the Saratoga Pact people had held their ritual – or whatever it had been – earlier in the evening. Leon has heard it referred to as the Pillow Room, a bizarre juxtaposition with the neighboring cabin, the Dark Room, where the Cruisers Club has set up bondage gear and bottles of lube and porn videos, projected onto the wall with an impressive 35mm system provided by Mr. T’s generosity.

The Pillow Room, by contrast, is piled ankle-deep with its eponymous pillows, with beaded curtains tinkling gently in each doorway. Smoke from a smoldering incense stick wafts and slowly swirls near the ceiling, picking up and diffusing the soft red glow of lava lamps. Leon is immediately and deeply uncomfortable.

“Welcome,” Joani calls. “Please remove your shoes and join us.”

This is a task unto itself. Leon’s shoes are fabulous four-inch platforms with a fuzzy zebra-striped pattern, and removing them is not so simple as merely slipping them off.

“Uh, okay. Just a minute.” He bends and tugs and eventually prizes each foot loose of its shoe.

When he pushes his way through the curtain, he sees the room is nearly spilling over with attendees. There are even participants sitting on the top bunks of the camp beds.

“Yes, we are very full,” Joan says, seeing his expression. “But I believe your partner has found a space for you.”

Leon’s eyebrows shoot up. He glances around and finds Chain tucked into a small corner between the end of a bunk and the wall.  _Partner?_

“Please have a seat,” Joani continues, “and we’ll get started. The hour has already begun, and we will need all of it.”

For a moment he considers bolting. But there are dozens of eyes on him, and his shoes are already off, so he slowly settles down cross-legged in front of Chain. His skintight gold pants creak in protest and tug at his leg hair.

“Welcome, all,” Joani says. “If everyone would please close your eyes, we’ll begin. We’re going to start by establishing our microcosmic orbit.”

The workshop quickly gets away from Leon. Joani talks about taking breaths from the perineum and pulling them out through the nose, establishing energy flows around their bodies and with their partners. He has one hand above one of Chain’s and the other below, and is trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to imagine the energy circuits Joani describes.

“Let’s focus on our root chakra,” she’s saying. “This is what connects our genitals with our partner’s.”

Noises from nervous giggles to grunts of appreciation circulate the room.

“Feel the connection to your partner, through your hands and through your orbs. Open yourself to exchanging your energies. Feel your partner’s sexual energy flowing into you, and yours into them.”

Leon slits his eyes open and looks at Chain. The other man also has his eyes open, and they exchange a dubious look.

Joani continues walking through the chakras, from the abdomen to the solar plexus to the heart, the throat, the third eye, and the crown. As each is introduced, Chain and Leon trade another look.

The hour passes slowly in this manner. Finally Joani asks them to open their eyes again. Leon and Chain smirk at each other.

“We’re going to do a final exercise,” Joani says. Her voice is still as smooth and serene as when Leon first encountered her. “We are going to perform soul gazing. This is where we gaze into our partner’s eyes for five full minutes.”

Thoughts of Rain’s eyes rise immediately to Leon’s mind. He pushes them away and tries to focus.

Brief confusion ensues as Joani guides them through determining which eye to look at. “Gaze into your partner’s soul,” she says as they begin. “What do you see there? Do you see past lives? Do you see their future?”

 _I see an eye_ , Leon thinks. Five minutes feels interminable.

More questions flow over them. Leon’s thoughts begin to wander. It is  _way_  past time for this party to start including sex.

“How does it feel to really see your partner?” Joani’s voice cuts through his thoughts. And then: “How does it feel to really be  _seen_?”

The question slips under Leon’s skin and seems to settle in his belly like a rock. A chill washes over him. Distantly, he feels his body recoil.

_How does it feel to really be seen?_

His mouth is suddenly dry. The room feels too hot, too close, too constricting. His palms are sweating. He tries to wipe them on his pants, only to find that they leave wet slicks on the gold lamé. He wonders if Chain has noticed his rising panic, but the other man seems to be spaced out.

_How does it feel to really be seen?_

He takes a shuddering breath. A bead of sweat rolls down his cheek, and he hears his answer inside his own head.

_How does it feel to really be seen?_

Terrifying.

It’s completely fucking terrifying.


	9. The Contest, Part I

There’s a short discussion after the workshop. Chain excuses himself early, citing his own class to run. Leon sits through it, half-listening as other people describe improbable-sounding visions of deserts and kings and angels. For his own part he mostly broods, giving a short answer when asked if he felt anything.

“Not really. Mostly I just spaced out. Sorry.”

“That’s perfectly fine,” Joani says. “Your experience is your own. Every experience is unique, and all are fine.”

When he leaves the cabin, feet jammed laboriously back into his shoes, an achingly-handsome man is pacing at the bottom of the steps. Leon recognizes him immediately: this is Connecticut Congressman Sinclair Everett. Deeply closeted, virtually married to Nate, and literally married to his high-profile socialite beard, with two darling children born of a lie.

“Leon,” the politician says as soon as he spots him. “We have a bit of a problem.”

Leon is slightly taken aback that the senator even knows his name. Yes, he’s a celebrity. But he never would have guessed Sinclair Everett for a disco fan.

“How can  _I_  help?” It’s not so much a generous offer as a somewhat incredulous query. Personally, he thinks he’s the last person most folks here would seek out to solve a problem.

“It’s the lesbians,” Sinclair says as they begin walking away from the Pillow Room. “They’re demanding to be allowed into the Dark Room.”

Even as an infrequent visitor to the space, Leon knows how much this will disturb the community. “What? That’s crazy.”

“I know. But Mr. T agrees with them and is putting pressure on Steven.  _He_  got T to agree to let them compete for it – the Cruisers will do a demonstration, and then the lesbians get to do their own. If they put on a good show, Steven has to let them in.”

“Well that should be an easy enough thing to squash,” Leon says. “But again, what are you looking for from  _me_?”

“Steven wants you to judge the contest. He figures you’re a good high-profile neutral party.”

This presents something of a dilemma. On the one hand, Leon wants to be seen standing in judgement of the event, and he has the power to give all the men what he knows they want: keeping the women out of their club. On the other, he’s not exactly eager to incur the wrath of every last woman on site, lesbian or no.

Ultimately, though, he’d much rather keep the good will of the male side of that coin.

“Okay. When is it?”

“ _Now_.”

The two hustle around the corner to the front of the Dark Room. Chain is just wrapping up his workshop, which was apparently on how to tie someone’s wrists. Men and women alike are gathered, in nearly equal numbers.

Steven sees him at the edge of the crowd and acknowledges him with a nod.

“Alright,” he says, raising his arms and his voice to gather their attention. “As some of you are aware, the women have  _requested_  – ” He puts sardonic emphasis on the word. ” – access to our Dark Room. They say they have no space of their own, and that they deserve a place to do their own bondage and discipline.”

A sussurus of whispers passes through the crowd. It’s hard to tell the disdainful from the confused and the excited.

“Mr. T,” Steven continues, “has asked that we put on a little show for everyone, demonstrating what we do at the Cruisers Club. The ladies will then do their own demonstration. If they are able to match our show… the Dark Room will open its doors to them.”

Half the crowd grumbles under its breath. The other half lets out a cheer.

“Leon,” he continues, “will act as judge, and his decision will be final.”

Leon flushes with importance.

“Walter,” Steven calls to his sub. “Step forward, son.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

The two make an interesting pair. Steven is shorter than Walter by more than a foot, a stocky, muscular, tattooed man who wears a leather vest over a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt and leather pants. Chains and metal studs decorate the ensemble. His hair is short, gray, and no-nonsense, and is face is shaven clean.

Walter, over six feet tall, has a similar leather vest, but its too-small size exposes a heavily-furred barrel chest and pierced nipples. His hair is long and wavy, with visible thinning on top, and a lustrous, drooping walrus moustache adorns his face.

“Kneel before me, son.”

“Yes, Daddy.” The larger man lowers himself to the ground and gazes up adoringly at the smaller.

“Remove your vest, son.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Give it to me.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

The vest is lovingly folded and placed on the Dark Room steps.

“Stand up, my son.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

Not one action is performed by the sub without instruction from his dom. Steven has Walter turn slowly, contrite and compliant, to display his body to the crowd, then remove his belt and give it to Steven. He directs Walter to a wooden rack leaning against the side of the cabin. Walter remains utterly pliable as Steven locks his wrists into leather cuffs.

“I’m going to mark you now, son.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Ten marks. You will count them, and you will thank me.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

Steven slowly caresses Walter’s back with one hand. Then, quick as a snake, he grabs the other end of the belt and snaps it hard across the big man’s broad back. A crack resounds through the campground.

“One, thank you Daddy!”

Another crack.

“Two, thank you Daddy!”

They continue to ten. At each blow, an angry red line slashes across Walter’s back. Walter remains still and stoic throughout the demonstration, his only reactions the steady count he keeps. Steven lays five marks diagonally from his left shoulder, then five more from his right, creating a diamond pattern of welts.

“See how beautiful my son is,” he says as he lands the belt across Walter again, and again. “Look at his beautiful skin. Look at his beautiful lines.” He seems to be speaking as much to Walter as to the audience.

When the beating is finished, Steven presses himself to Walter’s back. It  _must_  be painful, but Walter doesn’t flinch.

“I love you, my son.”

“I love you too, Daddy.”

Walter is unbound from the rack and his vest returned. Again, he shows no hint of pain when the leather contacts his wounds.

“My son did well,” Steven says to the crowd. “Now let’s see if the women can match him.”

Sinclair speaks just loudly enough for the men gathered near him to hear. “This ought to be good.”


	10. The Contest, Part II

The Black woman who steps out of the crowd is short of stature, but that simply means the authority she radiates is concentrated into a smaller space.

“I know,” she says as she walks toward the rack, her back to everyone, “that all you  _men_ think women can’t do what you do.” Her pace is deliberate, and she holds a riding crop in one hand, slapping it into her opposing palm in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. Her voice is honey-sweet and velvet-soft.

Dangerous.

“And that’s  _because_  – ” She rounds abruptly on the crowd and drops into a half-crouch, like a panther ready to leap. ” – you haven’t  _seen_  us.  _You_ think we’re soft and delicate, that we’ll ruin your club. Well,  _I say – ”_ She suddenly bares her teeth in a predatory smile, and the effect is sphincter-loosening. ” – that we can blow your tiny – ”

_Slap!_

” – little – ”

_Slap!_

” – testosterone-addled – ”

_Slap!_

” – minds!”

Leon remembers seeing this woman earlier. At the time she had on a denim jacket with a patch pinned to the back proclaiming “If you’re dissing the sisters, you ain’t fighting the power,” and one of a fist thrusting into a Venus symbol on the front. She was stomping around in combat boots, and her hair was held back with a ratty purple kerchief. Everything about her had screamed  _Fuck the system!_

Now she’s wearing flowing silk pants and a suit jacket, all in white that glows like moonlight next to her golden fawn-colored skin. She’s put on heavy eyeliner and mascara, and her lips are stained dusty purple. Silver hoops gleam on both ears. She continues bouncing the riding crop in her palm as she glares imperiously at the gathered crowd.

Leon finds himself involuntarily taking a step away from her.

“Come here, Claire.” Her voice cracks like a whip.

A slim, slight girl scurries up to her. She’s pure Cyndi Lauper without the pink hair, a bouncing thing in a tulle skirt, a midriff-baring lightweight shirt under an acid-washed denim vest, and layer upon layer of jangling bracelets. She trembles before the other woman, the fabric flowers pinned to her vest fluttering despite the lack of a breeze.

The domme doesn’t bother with niceties. “Strip.”

“Y-yes, Mistress Morgan.” Claire begins removing her vest and shirt, handing them to Morgan without being told.

It’s immediately clear that, while Morgan’s presence is commanding and Claire is eager to please, their performance is more rehearsed than sincerely felt. Leon begins composing his rejection speech.  _While the ladies no doubt did their best_ …

Claire hesitates when she gets to her bra, and Morgan slaps her midsection with the riding crop. “Off.” Claire complies, but when her small breasts are bared she tries to cover them with her hands.

Morgan smacks one hand, hard, with the crop. Claire yelps and drops both to her sides.

“I think that’s enough clothing,” Morgan says. “Go stand at the rack.”

Claire does as she’s told. Morgan shakes her head and  _tsks_.

“ _Wider_.” She kicks Claire’s feet apart, until her stance is nearly as wide as the rack itself. Then she grabs the waistband of the tulle skirt and yanks it down, exposing the girl’s bare cheeks. “Arms up!”

When Claire has been secured to the rack, Morgan turns back to her audience.

“Walter did ten,” she says with a smug smile. “But I think Claire can take more. Can’t you, Claire?”

“Yes, Mistress Morgan!”

“Now… I know you leather daddies like your…  _toys_.” Morgan holds up the crop, then tosses it aside. “But I believe in something more… personal.” She turns her hand in the air before them, like a woman admiring her fingernails. Then she turns to Claire and, without warning, smacks her resoundingly on the ass.

“Wuh… one?”

“Oh, no,” Morgan says with a low chuckle. “That one didn’t count. But the next one will. Keep count, and don’t forget to call me Mistress.”

Claire doesn’t respond, and Morgan grabs her roughly by the hair. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes, Mistress Morgan!”

The spanking commences.  _Their form of discipline fails to honor the deep relationships that sons form with their daddies, and with each other as brothers_.  _They are play-acting, at best_.

Somewhere in the middle, Claire loses count. “We’re starting over,” Morgan announces, and Claire lets out a moan of despair.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. The blows rain down faster and faster, until Claire can’t keep up. Morgan continues for a few more seconds, then pauses with her hand drawn back.

“Have you had enough?”

“N-n… no, Mistress Morgan!”

“That’s right,” Morgan says, dropping her hand. “You can take more. Now, let’s show these  _boys_  what  _else_  we can do.”

It seems to Leon as though she looks directly at him as she puts all four fingers of her right hand into her mouth and slowly draws them back out. She runs them down the crack of Claire’s ass, then keeps going, pushing under the lowered skirt. Then she thrusts up, hard. Claire screams, though whether from pleasure or pain is impossible to say. Perhaps both.

“ _Claire?!?_ ”

The shout comes from behind them. A butch-looking woman bursts through the crowd, stopping short of the tableau with her mouth open in stark disbelief.

“WHAT THE  _FUCK?!?_ ”

In an instant, everything erupts in chaos. The screaming woman leaps at Morgan, fists swinging wildly. Two more women surge forward to restrain her, one pinning her arms while the other does her best to haul her bodily away by the waist.

“I’ll  _kill_  you!” she’s howling. “I’ll fucking  _KILL YOU!_ ”

More women are screaming, and one of the leather daddies rushes out with his arms spread, trying to calm them. Steven releases Claire from the rack with hurried motions. “Fucking bitch!” Morgan yells; “Fucking  _whore!_ ” her attacker shrieks back. Dark muttering and shouts of disbelief rumble around and through the crowd.

By the time the dust settles, Claire has run off after the woman, calling “Barbara!” Leon guesses this must be her girlfriend’s – probably ex-girlfriend, now – name.

“Jesus Christ,” Sinclair mutters behind him _._

 _Most of all, we don’t need the drama they will undoubtedly bring to our scene. Just take this shameful display as an example_.

Leon takes a step forward, ready to deliver the speech that will put an end to this nonsense once and for all.

Steven holds up his hands for silence. “Leon,” he says, looking at him. Leon begins to smile and takes a breath.

“I know I asked you to judge,” Steven continues. “But this is my club.”

_What?_

“And I say, these women have shown us what they can do. Chain,” he says, addressing the boy at the top of the steps. “Take down that sign.”

The sign that proclaims the Dark Room to be a men’s only space is ripped down. Leon can hardly breathe. Fury and humiliation war for superiority in his glare.

“This space is hereby open to women and men alike.” Steven and his crew disappear into the Dark Room as a cheer goes up from the female half of the crowd.

Leon slowly turns around. Sinclair, Nate, and a few others wear looks of disbelief.

“What… the fuck… was  _that?_ ” Leon demands.

“Bullshit, that’s what,” Sinclair says, crossing his arms. “I can’t believe he just cut you out like that.”

“And let the women in, after that… that… fucking disgrace.” With the show apparently over, the crowd begins to disperse.

“It’s the end of the Dark Room,” Sinclair says. The cluster of them start making their way toward the main cabin. “Hell, it’s the end of an era. It might as well just be the end of the Cruisers.”

“It’s bullshit,” Leon says, and the others nod and echo it back to him.

“Bullshit.”


	11. Poetry Reading

Leon stops at the cabin that houses the multiple toilets and shower stalls to do another line, then paces around the outside of the building, kicking clumps of grass and cursing under his breath. This eventually culminates in him punching the cabin wall, which is unmoved by his fury. Searing pain breaks through his red haze.

He stays a while longer, muttering to himself and massaging his hand. When he’s calmed down enough, he makes his way back to the main cabin, where Tony the DJ has started spinning tunes.

One entire half of the cabin, opposite the dining area, was converted earlier into a scaled-down recreation of Club Diamond, erected by a work crew Nate brought up especially for the task. Two layers of scintillating silver fabric waterfall from the ceiling and pool on the floor, forming the front and back curtains. There’s a disco ball, colored track lighting, and a killer sound system. The only thing missing is a light-up dance floor, but between the stage and the rows of benches set up for the audience, there really isn’t room for one anyway.

Diego, Rain, Enrique, a woman named Kim who Leon knows from Studio 54, and a few others are on the benches near the back. Steven, apparently having no problem leaving the women unsupervised in his club, is sitting near them as well. Leon inhales deeply, then takes a bench behind him.

“Hey, man, what was with cutting me out back there?”

Steven half-turns to give Leon an unimpressed look. “It’s my club,” he says with a shrug.

“Yeah, I get it. It’s your club, your call, whatever. You just didn’t have to make a fool out of me in front of everyone like that.”

“So what do you want, an apology?”

 _Yes_ , he thinks. His chest is tight. He wants to shout the man down, make him feel as impotent as Leon does. But Steven’s scarred knuckles and meaty fists look like they have been used for more than just a bondage show. His leather vest shows off arms corded with muscle.

“No,” he says reluctantly. “It’s fine. I didn’t really want to have to piss off anyone on either side anyway. Better you than me.”

“Good.” Steven turns back to his conversation.

Leon balls up his hands and pounds a fist into his thigh. He takes deep, even breaths, trying to find calm again.

At length, he turns on his bench and into the ongoing conversation between Diego, Rain, Enrique, and Kim. “Hey, Diego! How’s your night going?”

It seems like the boy flushes, but it’s hard to tell for sure in the semi-darkness. “Uh, pretty good.”

Leon smiles at Kim. She’s sort of with the Saratoga Pact, but sort of with Studio 54. In fact, she’s sort of with a lot of social circles: she makes her living as a life coach and general career mentor. She was the one who convinced him to update his sound and helped hook him up with some session musicians to lay down the tracks for what he’s unveiling tonight.

“Hey, Kim! I see you’ve met my son.”

Kim glances at Diego, eyebrows raised in surprise. “I didn’t know you had a son! Diego, why didn’t you tell me?”

Diego shifts on the bench, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Yeah. Leon is my dad.”

“We only found out about each other a year ago,” Leon says. “I’m showing him the ropes around here.”

Strictly speaking, this is not entirely true at this point. When they first met, Leon had taken the boy under his wing, gone out and helped him cruise the clubs, and supplied him with dope, though with a warning to “Just try a little.” He’d given Diego a place to stay in his high-rise penthouse, and introduced him to Kimberly, a model photographer who had immediately given the boy a gig. He’s helped  _make_  him in the big city.

Leon doesn’t like to think about the time Diego stumbled in coked up and strung out and spent the night vomiting on the bathroom floor. Or the time he brought a friend home, clearly if awkwardly flirting with him, who somehow ended up in bed with Leon instead. Or the time Sorrento dragged him away from one of the pimps whose presence he normally willfully ignored at Studio 54. More and more, he’s let the kid run free without a leash, a 17-year-old released into a city of temptation and drugs and clubs where older cruisers can’t wait to get their hands on sweet young flesh.

So he doesn’t think about those things. He’s an  _awesome_  father, he tells himself. Most kids get a disciplinarian; Diego gets a fun, good-time buddy who can give him anything he wants and throw the doors of the closet wide open. What little queer kid  _wouldn’t_ want that?

“I got him an underwear modeling gig,” Leon tells Kim, “but I’ll bet you can coach him into even bigger and better things.”

“I’d love to!” She turns to engage Diego further, and Leon isn’t sure, but he gets the sense that the kid is a little relieved at the change in conversation.

“So what else are we talking about?” He puts his elbows on his knees and leans toward Enrique and Rain.

“Rain has been reading us some of his poetry,” Enrique says. His smile carries the hint of suggestion.

Something flutters in Leon’s breast at the idea, followed immediately by annoyance. He is  _not_  some sentimental fool who falls for kids, no matter how beautiful. He’s not someone who falls for  _anyone._  This Rain thing… he just needs to get it out of his head, out of his system.

There’s only one thing to be done about that.

“Really?” He slowly takes off his sunglasses and lets heat into his gaze. “I’d love to hear some poetry.”

Rain is holding a little black notebook, its pages worn at the edges. “Yeah, yeah, okay, I, I – I’ve got more, let me, let me – let me find another one.” He begins leafing through the notebook, rejecting one scribbled page after another.

Leon slides his hand over Rain’s knee and halfway up his thigh. “Why don’t you come read it to me somewhere more… private?”

Rain nearly drops the notebook. He fumbles it back into a now clawlike grasp, closing the pages over one finger. His voice comes out shocked, shaking. Eager. “Uh. Um. Uh. Oh, oh, uh… oh – oh, okay.”

Leon takes him by the hand and leads him out of the cabin. He never sees the disgusted look that passes over Diego’s face.

They move down the back steps, to where the porch light just barely spills over their faces. Leon had said “private,” but what he’d meant was “not right here.” He wants to be seen.

“Here,” he says, backing Rain up to the railing. He grabs the boy’s hips in both hands, sees the growing bulge at his crotch. Rain doesn’t resist; his eyes are half-closed. Still pressing Rain against the railing with one hand, Leon uses the other to untie and unlace the boy’s pants.

No surprise: there’s nothing but Rain behind the leather. What could have fit under those pants without leaving an unseemly line? His cock springs out, erect and quivering, the moment his laces are undone. Leon curls his hand around the shaft and squeezes gently, and Rain moans.

“Start reading,” Leon says, and lowers himself to his knees.

Pages are frantically flipped. “When the routine bites hard,” Rain begins.

Leon takes him into his mouth.

“Ohhh. And… and ambitions are lo –  _ohh_  – low.”

His groans of pleasure are delicious. Leon decides he will get Rain off before the boy finishes his poem.

It’s how he will win.

“And – and the resentment rides high, but emotions won’t –  _ahhh!_  – won’t grow.”

He keeps his lips soft, his tongue gentle. He moves to the head of Rain’s cock and caresses it with open-mouthed kisses. Flickers the tip of his tongue over the frenulum, the sensitive place he knows lies just under the head. He can’t properly stroke the boy’s perineum from here, but he presses his fingertips to it through the leather nonetheless, letting them slip up and down the crack of his ass.

“And we’re, we’re – we’re change – oh my god – changing our ways, take –  _FUCK_  – taking different roads.”

He takes Rain all the way in again. Increases speed. Increases pressure. He was made for this.

“Then love, love… love… oh god, oh god, oh god,  _oh god_ …”

Hot semen fills Leon’s mouth, salty on his tongue, and he swallows it as quickly as it pulses forth. Rain curls his fingers into Leon’s hair, thrusts his crotch hard into his face. “ _Leon_ …”

Leon brings both hands up to squeeze the boy’s ass, and holds his cock in his mouth until it begins to soften. Without moving away, he looks up through his eyelashes at Rain’s face. “Finish your poem.”

“Then love…” Rain catches his breath and gives a final shudder. “Then love, love will tear us apart again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made allowances within the game for characters to use real-world songs / lyrics as their own. All songs are used without permission.
> 
> “Love Will Tear Us Apart” © Joy Division, 1980. Used without permission.


	12. Seen

Rain sags against the railing. He tucks himself in and laces back up, deft finger movements performed without looking.

“Leon,” he says softly. Tenderly. “I see it now. You’re like me. You have poetry in your soul.”

Leon is still kneeling, and Rain reaches out tentatively. The backs of his fingers brush Leon’s cheek and begin tracing the line of his jaw.

“I know you,” he murmurs. “I see you.”

_How does it feel to really be seen?_

Leon jerks his head away and gets to his feet. “Jesus Christ, kid,” he says. “It was just a blowjob.”

For a moment Rain stands in open-mouthed silence. His expression tumbles slowly from hope to confusion, confusion to bewilderment, bewilderment to pain.

It would be heartbreaking, if Leon cared.

“But you, you, you – you wanted poetry, you – ” He tries to reach out again.

Leon takes a step back. One of his shirt buttons has somehow come undone, and he closes it up again.

“Yeah. I thought you’d get off on it.” He raises an eyebrow, shrugs a shoulder. “You writers are like that – you love the sound of your own voices.” He flicks a glance at Rain’s crotch and smirks. “Seems like it worked.”

Rain’s eyebrows come together. His lips compress into a straight thin line. “I guess that’s it, then.”

“Guess so,” Leon says to Rain for the second time that night. “Go find someone else to fuck. It’s supposed to be a party.”

He doesn’t look at Rain’s face as he walks away.


	13. It's Raining Men

There isn’t much time now. Nate has sent someone out to announce, to the surprise of no-one, that the drag show will start fifteen minutes behind schedule. Most of the partygoers are filtering in and finding seats. Leon has managed to slip inside without encountering Rain again.

He spots Enrique hovering near the door. There’s just one thing to check on, to make sure the young bartender is ready for his part of the show.

He sidles up. “We all set?”

Enrique grins salaciously. “Hell yeah.” Then he hesitates. “There’s just one thing.”

Shit. Leon isn’t sure he can deal with complications, not now.

“What?” he says, trying to prepare himself for the worst.

“Well, the thing is…” Enrique takes his hat off and turns the brim around in his hands. His stash is still affixed to the inside. “You’re into me for a few, Leon. You’re my friend so I don’t mind floating you for a bit, but I got my own bills too, y’know?”

The young bartender is, in fact, a med student, a thing not widely advertised among the current crowd. He deals on the side just to make enough to keep himself fed.

“So I’ll pay up after the party. I just don’t have enough cash on me right now.”

The truth is, he may not have enough cash right after the party either. Lately he’s been struggling a bit to stay ahead of his residuals, and he’s into a few more people than just Enrique. He’s the good time guy, but good times have become a bit more lean these last couple years.

It’s okay. This next record is going to be a  _smash_. He just has to get there.

“You’re not backing out, are you?”

“Naw, I just think…” Enrique gives him a sly look. “I think we should flip things around up there. Y’know. You do me.”

Leon grimaces as he considers. It won’t have nearly the impact he wanted. But… it would still give the crowd a show. And he’s pretty sure nobody else will do something like  _this_.

“Fine,” he says. “Just try and make it short.”

“No performance anxiety here, man.”

Leon nods. “When Nate calls us.”

“Yep.”

The lights flash, and Tony stops the record with a scratch. Leon and Enrique hustle to the front benches, reserved for performers. There’s the crackle of the needle being set.

A gloved arm rises gracefully in the gap between the front curtains. “A kiss on the hand may be quite sentimental…”

The Queen of New York, Nate’s drag persona, emerges in all her glory. “But diamonds are a girl’s best friend.”

She’s resplendent in a stunning bright pink dress and wig of tumbling blonde curls. She takes a turn on the stage, showing off her heels, her sparkling barette, her smooth figure. Her brows are painted high and arched, her lips luscious red.

The crowd goes nuts.

“A kiss may be grand, but it won’t pay the rental on your humble flat, or help you feed your  _own_ pussycat.” The music fades out, and The Queen strikes a pose, her back to the crowd, looking coyly over her shoulder. Her long false eyelashes create a dramatic downturned effect.

A new song begins. Upbeat rhythm with snare on the backbeat. Bass coming in on a catchy ostinato, a syncopated pair of triangle chimes. It repeats, and this time a woman’s high voice pops two “ _Oh!_ “s along with the chimes.

“Some boys kiss me, some boys hug me, I think they’re okay.” The Queen runs her gloved hands over her own body, her hips, her chest, and ends with both arms up in an adoration-accepting pose. “If they don’t give me proper credit – ” She turns, rubbing thumb and fingertips together, and stalks slowly toward Sinclair in the front row. She abruptly turns again, haughty. ” – I just walk away.”

The Queen knows exactly how to work a crowd. Every movement is controlled and intentional, and her lip-syncing could nearly fool Leon. Two more performers emerge from the curtain: Chain, and the dancer Reginald. They join The Queen, fawning over her and being pushed away by turns.

“Cuz we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl! You know that we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl!”

Reginald drops into a full split at the end, arms in a triumphant V above his head. Chain takes a knee, arms in a similar pose, and together they draw the focus of every eye in the room onto The Queen.

When her song is finished, The Queen takes the mic to applause and wolf whistles. “Thank you, thank you, thank you my darlings, my dears,” she says, blowing kisses. “We have a wonderful show lined up for you tonight. We have some new talent gracing our stage for the first time; we have all your Club Diamond favorites; we even have a few ghosts among us, such as Leon’s career.”

The audience chuckles. Leon forces himself to smile.

“So! First up is a newcomer to our stage, but someone I’m sure you all know: the lovely and talented Pen!”

There are a few murmurs of surprise here and there; many of them had no idea Pen would perform.

She takes the microphone. Her voice is strong and she walks confidently around the stage as she sings. “Touch me. How can it be? Believe me, the sun always shines on TV.”

“Next,” The Queen announces after Pen’s performance, “another newcomer. Let’s hear it for singer songwriter Marylou!”

The woman who emerges seems a little hesitant, a little shy. She struggles with adjusting the microphone stand to her guitar, and Tony and Rain both step up to help.

She closes her eyes, and her opening breath trembles. But her fingers know the strings by heart, and her voice is velvet-smooth and achingly lovely. “Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick, and think of you. Caught up in circles, confusion is nothing new.” The song continues, a plaintive call to someone loved and lost.

The applause, when it comes, seems to shock her out of a trance. She takes quick, nervous bows, and disappears backstage.

“Absolutely beautiful,” The Queen says. “A credit to our stage.”

Next is Diane, with a strip tease to “Whatever Lola Wants” that falls just short of revealing her breasts, then Lady Verona, who seduces the crowd with a smoking lip sync of “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”

When Lady Verona disappears behind the curtain, Leon looks over and nods to Enrique. His stomach is knotted up despite himself; much as he’s tried to pay them no attention, he’s heard the whispers of “has been” and “washed up” and “pitiful” that cut the air behind him wherever he goes.

“And here’s Leon,” The Queen says. “I’m sure he’ll entertain us with one of his hits.”

Leon takes the stage from the left, Enrique from the right. They meet in the center, and wordlessly come together for a passionate-looking kiss.

Then Leon goes down on his knees.

There are whoops of delight and shocked gasps as he undoes Enrique’s belt. Pushes his fly open. Blows him fast and hard, right there, in front of everyone.

Good to his word, Enrique finishes quickly, and leaves the stage to howls and whistles with a satisfied grin and a flourish of his hat.

Leon stands up. Faces the crowd. He feels defiance in his face, his stance, his voice. “Disco might be dead after all,” he shouts, “but  _I’m not,_ and I’m here to prove it! Hit it!” he adds to Tony, and takes his opening pose, head lowered, fists clenched at his sides. The music starts. An insistent hammering beat, a rising melody that crescendoes a fifth above the octave. A roll of electronic thunder.

His head snaps up and he looks out seductively from beneath lowered brows. “Hi! I’m  _your_  weather girl.” The backing track chimes in “ _Uh huh!_ ”

“And have  _we_  got  _news_  for  _you!_ ”

“ _You better listen!_ ” adds the track.

“Get ready, all you lonely girls, and leave those umbrellas at home. Alright!”

Electricity runs through the audience; he can feel it. Whispers: “ _Oh my god_.” “ _Holy shit_.”

He isn’t dead. He’s here, he’s  _alive_ , he’s on top of the  _fucking world_.

“Temperature’s rising. Barometer’s getting low. According to all sources, the street’s the place to go. Cuz tonight for the first time, just about half-past ten, for the first time in history, it’s gonna start raining men!”

The crowd explodes.

“It’s raining men! Hallelujah, it’s raining men! Amen!” He raises his arms to the heavens, inviting the rain, inviting the applause, inviting it all. “I’m gonna go out, I’m gonna let myself get absolutely soaking wet! It’s raining men!”

It all begins to blur together. The screams, the heat, the lights, the glory. He burns like the fucking sun.

“It’s raining men! Hallelujah, it’s raining men! Amen!” Everyone is singing with him. The song ends with a fade-out, and he lets the backing track take over as he throws his head back and his arms open wide.

The applause is thunderous.

“ _Leon!_ ” they scream. “ _LEON!_ ”

And now, here, in this moment… it’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made allowances within the game for characters to use real-world songs / lyrics as their own. All songs are used without permission.
> 
> “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” © Jule Styne and Leo Robin, 1949  
> “Material Girl” © Peter Brown and Robert Rans, 1984  
> “The Sun Always Shines on TV” © Warner Bros., 1985  
> “Time After Time” © Cyndi Lauper and Rob Hyman, 1983  
> “It’s Raining Men” © Paul Jabara and Paul Shaffer, 1982


	14. Let's Dance

The applause continues after he walks through the curtains. Backstage, Lady Verona is leaning against a table getting a blowjob from someone Leon doesn’t recognize. She lets out a sudden cry, and The Queen chuckles into the microphone. “It sounds like Leon isn’t the  _only_  one making it rain.” An echoing laugh ripples through the audience.

Leon leaves through a side door. Outside it’s dark and, if not exactly quiet, at least muffled. He takes a few steps away from the building and a few deep breaths, wipes sweat from his face.

He hasn’t been to church in years. He couldn’t really say exactly what he believes in anymore. But under the dark July sky he gazes up, presses two fingertips to his lips, and releases a kiss to the heavens. Maybe it’s to God.

Maybe it’s to the memory of his mother.

He lingers for one more breath. Then he makes for the back door.

Sorrento sees him first and wraps him in a crushing hug. “That was amazing,” he says into Leon’s hair. “You and me, man. You and me. We are gonna tear the fucking roof off.”

They embrace for several seconds, then Leon retakes his seat at the front. People whisper congratulations to him from every direction and reach to shake his hand. He basks in the praise.

“Alright everyone,” The Queen says, taking the microphone again. “We only have  _two_ acts left.” The audience makes disappointed noises on cue.

“But I  _promise_  you’re going to love this next one. Put your hands together for our very own Chain.”

Another Madonna song starts up, and the audience cheers as they immediately recognize the opening notes of “Like a Virgin.” Chain steps through on the last beat of the intro.

He moves like a model on a catwalk. “I made it through the wilderness.” His body rolls twice from pelvis to shoulders on the synth hits. “Somehow I made it through.”  _Beat. Beat_. “Didn’t know how lost I was until I found you.”

Sinclair is the first to start waving a dollar bill. Chain sashays over and bends to take it with his teeth. Men and women alike howl.

He struts back to center stage and unbuckles his harness. “But you made me feel, yeah you made me feel shiny and new.” He rips the harness off and tosses it aside.

“Like a virgin,  _hey!_  Touched for the very first time. Like a virgin, when your heart beats next to mine.”

More clothing comes off, all while the boy gyrates hypnotically. More dollars are waving in the air. Chain saunters by the front row and hands stuff bills into his waistband.

At the bridge he drops to the floor and crawls toward them, slow and catlike. Leon pounds his knee with a fist. He  _needs_  to fuck this boy, and soon.

Just before the end Chain turns around and puts his fingers in the waist of his boxers. Looks over his shoulder. Tosses the audience a saucy grin.

He flips the band down, makes an  _O_  face, flips it back up, and flounces through the curtain.

It takes a few minutes before the stomping and whistling subsides.

“I’m afraid,” The Queen says with dramatic sorrow, “that this is our  _final_  act for the evening. But don’t be sad, the disco starts right after them, and I hope you’ll  _all_  stay to dance.”

More cheering. More clapping.

“Please welcome to the stage… Urban Renaissance!”

Simon wheels out a synthesizer, while Rain carries a mic stand. Skye stands to one side, letting the other two handle trivialities like setup.

“We are Urban Renaissance,” Rain says when the band’s various instruments are in place. “And we want you to  _clear this fucking dance floor!_  Get these benches out of here and  _let’s fucking dance!_ ”

Their opening strains sound like early Beatles.  _Twist and Shout?_  Leon thinks.

Abruptly it breaks out with a driving bass line and a heavy backbeat, with quick chords from Rain’s guitar laid over it in a disco-like counter rhythm.  _Post disco_ , he remembers Rain saying. It’s funk. It’s rock. It’s dance.

It’s like nothing he’s heard before.

Rain and Simon come in as backup singers. “ _Let’s dance!_ ” Skye steps up to the mic and turns a smoldering look on the audience. “Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.”

“ _Let’s dance!_ ”

“To the sound they’re playing on the radio.”

“ _Let’s sway!_ ”

“While color lights up your face.”

“ _Let’s sway!_ ”

“Sway through the crowd to an empty space.”

And then the music changes again, keeping the bass but laying dreamy vocal harmonies and a long notes pulled from Rain’s guitar over it.

“If you say run, I’ll run with you,” Skye croons. “And if you say hide, we’ll hide.”

“ _Hide, ahhhh-ahhhh-ahhhh._ ”

“Because my love for you would break my heart in two.”

They drop into the “Twist and Shout” intro again, laying one voice over another in simple thirds.

“If you should fall into my arms, tremble like a flower!”

There’s hardly space on the dance floor, and Leon is in the middle of it. Hips bump and gyrate, arms thrust into the air.

He can’t take his eyes off of Rain.

The guitarist’s own eyes are closed, his head down and bobbing with the beat. He rocks back and forth as he plays, his frenetic energy focused and channeled through his instrument. His movements are seductive, and yet Leon senses it’s unconscious on Rain’s part.

And the lyrics. What sounded ridiculous earlier suddenly makes sense. It  _is_  dance music, and it  _is_  poetry at the same time. It’s irresistible.

_Oh, fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made allowances within the game for characters to use real-world songs / lyrics as their own. All songs are used without permission.
> 
> “Like a Virgin” © Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg, 1984  
> “Let’s Dance” © David Bowie, 1982


	15. Encounters

What he needs is sex. Lots and lots of sex. And more coke. Lots more coke.

The dance floor is still packed when he returns from the restroom, and Urban Renaissance is nowhere to be seen. Tony has returned to spinning dance tunes.

A dancer gyrates toward Leon. He’s somewhat aware of a beautiful brown-skinned face and dark curls. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Dance is effortless for the disco king. He slides behind the other man, putting a hand on his shoulder and bumping pelvis-to-buttocks.

Minutes later they are on the porch and Leon is swallowing cum while the man groans, his hand gripping Leon’s hair tight.

He zips up and looks a question that doesn’t need to be spoken.

“Not now,” Leon says, standing up. He turns the other man’s shoulders to nudge him back into the cabin-turned-dance-hall, and gives him a quick swat on the ass before following him back inside.

_That’s one_ , he thinks. It doesn’t occur to him that he never learned his name.

***

Another one finds him, approaching with a smile that suggests and invites.

A name floats up from the depths of Leon’s memory. “Eli, right? Comparative literature.”

“Mmm-hm.” Eli’s arms slip behind Leon’s neck. He feels the kid’s erection as they make contact.

The porch again, this time his hand working feverishly inside unbuttoned pants. Hot sticky wetness gushing between his fingers as Eli pulses rhythmically.

Back inside.  _Cute kid_.

***

There’s a person in drag, a blue spangled top and black miniskirt and silver heels, black curls and a name he never caught.

“Hey.” He doesn’t need more of an opening line than that; she smiles back seductively and closes the distance.

They dance for a few minutes, then Leon pushes her into a corner of the room and fumbles her skirt up. She bends forward, and he pushes his cock into her ass. Holds her by a shoulder as he thrusts, again, again, again, and finally comes, groaning.

“Thanks,” he says before walking away.

Faintly, behind him, he hears her ask, incredulous, “Did… did he just  _thank_  me?”

***

Another, another, another. Faces blur together, names are forgotten, if they were ever learned to begin with. Fucking and sucking, fingering and fisting, licking and stroking.

There’s always more to be had. They all want Leon.


	16. Chained Up

Eventually Leon runs across Chain again. “That strip tease was un-fucking-real.”

Chain preens a bit. He’s an easy kid to impress: a little money, a little attention, and he’ll eat out of Leon’s palm.

“I saw a little of your rope demo, too,” Leon continues. This is sort of a lie; he got there only for the tail end, but he doubts it really matters. “You know, we’ve never tried… any of that bondage stuff you’re into.” He moves closer, tucks an arm around Chain’s waist. He’s back in his pants and harness, but most of him from the waist up is bare, smooth, warm skin, and Leon glides his fingertips along the top of the leather waistband. He feels himself go hard.

“Maybe you’d like to show me a bit.”

“If you want.” Chain puts his own arm around Leon as they head to the Dark Room.

Up until now, Leon hasn’t actually been inside. The lurid images of the projected porn are visible from the outside, and the Cruisers have left little doubt in anyone’s mind as to what they’ll find in the space, but seeing it for himself still takes his breath for a moment.

Chain leads him to where cuffs are attached to an overhead bar. “I’m going to put you in these,” he says. “Then I’ll hit you with the flogger. You saw how that worked earlier? The code words?”

“Green, yellow, red,” Leon says. Chain had reiterated them at the end of his rope demonstration.

“That’s right.” Chain begins fastening the cuffs around Leon’s wrists. Their metal loops are in turn connected to bolts in the bar, giving him freedom to rotate his arms but not move his hands from their fixed position.

“Is that comfortable?”

Leon isn’t sure how to answer. Is it supposed to be? He’s pretty sure comfort isn’t the point of getting tied up and beaten.

“Uh… I guess?”

He can’t tell now since he’s facing away, but it seems like Chain hesitates. “Okay,” he says finally. “I’m going to hit you now. You tell me if you want it harder.”

A light blow. “Green.”

Another, only slightly harder. “Still green.”

Chain keeps going, but the blows never really seem to get to a point where they’re especially painful. Chain has him count up to ten, then back down.

“How was that?”

 _Awkward_. “Um. Good.”

There’s a long pause. “Do you want me to fuck you now?”

At least that’s a known quantity. “Yes.”

Chain uncuffs him, and he gets his pants down while the boy finds lube. He braces against the wall. Chain returns and presses against him from behind, grinding and stroking until he’s ready.

His cock fills Leon.

So why does he feel so empty?

Afterward, they embrace. “Did you have a good time?” Chain asks as they exit the Dark Room.

“Of course.”  _Not really. I did this for you._  “Did you?”

“Of course.”

His tone is as dishonest as Leon’s was. Neither of them says anything more.


	17. Purple Haze ('Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy)

Chain and Leon part ways outside the Dark Room, Chain excusing himself to his bunk. Leon walks back toward the main cabin alone.

He finds Skye standing on the sidewalk in semi-darkness. “Skye?”

The boy glances over and blows out smoke from a joint. “Oh. Hey, Leon.”

The silence feels awkward. Or maybe that’s just Leon.

“You’re not… hanging out with the band?”

Skye rolls his eyes elaborately. “My  _brother_  is being a fucking pain in the ass. ‘ _Oh, Skye_ ,'” he singsongs in a high falsetto. “‘ _You’re spending too much money._ ‘ I don’t see what the big deal is. We’re going to have a record contract really soon.” He takes a long, angry pull on the joint, then wordlessly offers it to Leon.

“Yeah?” Leon sips the joint, lets the smoke out without really inhaling.

A flush creeps into Skye’s cheeks. “Mr. T is  _very_  interested. He thinks I have talent.” A beat. “ _We_  have talent.”

Leon considers for a second. It’s almost too easy.

“Oh, you definitely do,” he says, and touches Skye’s elbow. “I could tell the moment you started singing. You bring Rain’s lyrics to life.”

He was right. Suddenly Skye is all attention, basking in the praise, his eyes hungry for more. “That’s what Mr. T said too.” His lips begin curving in a hint of a smile. “Hey, you’re in the music business, right?”

Oh lord, could the kid  _be_  any more self-absorbed?

“That’s right,” Leon purrs. “I know promoters. Publicists. People who can get your face out there.” He slides his fingers from Skye’s elbow down to his hand and tugs.

***

“Um,” he says a while later.

Skye looks embarrassed. “Yeah, um… I came a little while ago, so…”

His erection is fading again; he starts going flaccid any time Leon isn’t completely focused on keeping him up. It’s been nearly fifteen minutes, and things are going nowhere. Leon rocks back on his heels.

“We can just…” Skye shrugs.

“Yeah.” Leon gets up, brushes mud from his knees. They’re under a tree, and the ground hasn’t entirely dried from the storm that passed through the day before.

Skye pushes himself off the tree he’s leaning against and runs his hands over his own ass, dislodging bits of bark. “I hope these aren’t stained,” he says, craning his head over one shoulder. “Do you see anything?” He turns so Leon can look.

The pants are a black-and-white diamond pattern that fit him like a glove. Leon can’t help grimacing wistfully… Skye really does have a magnificent little ass. “No. You’re good, man.”

“Cool.” He avoids looking back at Leon. “Okay, well. I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah. See you.”

***

His son is coming down the back steps at the same time that he’s approaching them. Leon begins to smile; Diego stops cold in his tracks. “What the fuck was that?” The boy’s face is white, his eyes narrowed in fury.

Leon takes half a step back. Had Diego seen him with Skye? “What the fuck was  _what?_ ”

“That… that… that  _bullshit_  on the stage.” Diego flings one arm in the direction of the main cabin. “That… with Enrique. Just… right in front of everyone.”

For a few seconds Leon is too stunned to speak. His jaw works soundlessly. “I… yeah?” he finally manages.

It’s Diego’s turn to stare open-mouthed at his father. “So what the fuck  _was_  it?”

“It was… it was the show. I don’t… what are you so upset about?”

“What am I – ? Are you fucking  _kidding me?_ ” They glare at each other for several more seconds until Diego explodes. “Everywhere I  _look_ , you’re  _fucking someone!_  I can’t go anywhere, because all I see is you and every fucking person at this fucking party!”

Leon shakes his head slowly and raises his hands in an open-palmed shrug. “… and?”

They stare one another down, one livid, one dumbfounded.

This time Leon breaks the tension. “It’s a party, kid. Public sex is what we  _do_. It’s free love, it’s the sexual revolution.” He looks around at the surrounding trees and darkness; he can’t see anyone from here, but he’s certain that if he walked out of the firelight in any random direction it wouldn’t take long to trip over someone with their dick out.

Diego’s lip curls into a sneer. “It’s disgusting.”

“How is it disgusting? This is Fire Island in the woods! This is what Mr. T’s party is about!”

“I don’t want to have to watch my  _dad_  having sex with someone I did!”

That brings Leon up short. “Are you… are you serious? Kid, I’ve been fucking Enrique for a lot longer than you have.”

White skin flushes red. “It’s not – it’s not just him, it’s – you’re – ”

“I’m what?”

“You’re… you’re a  _whore_.” Diego spits the word.

Laughter, harsh and condescending, bubbles up from Leon’s chest. “No,” he says, “you’re thinking of Chain. Whores get  _paid_.  _I_  do the paying.”

“Yeah, well, Enrique said you only did it because you owe him money.”

Leon feels himself reeling. Enrique talked about him behind his back? To his own son? He takes a deep, steadying breath. “Well… so what? Why does it even matter why I did it? Everyone loved it!”

“Not everyone. I heard Fernando say that you  _know_  someone’s washed up when they’re the one  _giving_  the blowjob on stage instead of getting blown.”

Pain like a gut punch. The world seems to close around Leon.

It can’t be true. They cheered for him. They howled and whistled, clapped for Enrique when he took a bow.

“Everyone here thinks you’re a  _joke_ ,” Diego says, his voice dripping with scorn. “I could hear them all whispering. They were all staring at  _me_  when you put on your stupid show.”

Leon’s walls come slamming down. He looks at his son and raises his chin, makes his tone cold and aloof. “Well,” he says, and shrugs a shoulder. “That sounds like a whole lot of not my problem.”

Speechless, Diego stalks back up the main steps. And once again, Leon walks away.


	18. Leon's Song

Abner finds him by the river, staring into the water and furiously smoking a cigarette.

“Ahhh.” He steps up behind Leon with hands clasped behind his back. “I’ve always found the babble of a brook clears the mind. Leon,” he says abruptly, “You have the look of a man in a state of distress.”

“Are all poets this observant?”

This gets a light chuckle from Abner. “I most graciously accept your jibe about my powers of vigilance,” he says in a voice that wears self-deprecation like a scarf: an accessory that can be added or removed at his whim.

“However,” he continues, “even a poet as self-absorbed as myself cannot miss that you shouted down your son before stomping into the woods and sucking on that cigarette as if it were an especially young and delectable penis.” He steps up and turns to face Leon, his white garb glowing in the moonlight. “So tell me your troubles, and I’ll give you this old poet’s poor but well-meaning advice.”

Leon drops the cig and grinds it out with the heel of his shoe. “Is everyone laughing at me?” He doesn’t look at Abner.

In his peripheral vision he registers the poet’s surprise. “Certainly not! Not that I’ve seen.” A beat. “Why?”

“Diego.” He finally turns incrementally toward Abner. “He was upset about people staring at him during my part of the show. Embarrassed about seeing me suck a cock in front of everyone.”

“That boy,” Abner says emphatically, “needs someone to loosen him up. Look, didn’t you hear them cheering?”

Leon nods miserably.

“Someone out there will always criticize you,” Abner says. “But fuck ’em. No, really, listen to me.” He grabs Leon by the arms. “Fuck. Them. You think I haven’t gotten my share of hate? My share of ridicule? You and I have been fighting homophobia all our lives. Me through writing. You through music.”

Leon just keeps nodding.

“You’ve been an inspiration to me. The courage you had to be so flamboyantly gay, right in the public eye. I even…” He trails off, and if Leon didn’t know better he’d swear the man blushes. “I used to dream of meeting you. Of  _knowing_  you.” He emphasizes the word meaningfully.

Maybe… maybe he’s still got it after all. Leon reaches his own hand up to cover Abner’s arm as the poet still holds him by the shoulders. “Used to?”

Abruptly Abner drops his hands and takes a step away. “Oh,” he sputters. “I’m flattered, truly, but I’m afraid I just entered into a relationship.”

Disappointment slumps Leon’s shoulders, but at least it’s a rejection with a reason. “Oh, I see.” He does his best to smile. “Who’s the lucky man?”

“My student, Eli.”

“The kid I gave a handjob to on the porch earlier? I guess it must be  _very_  recent.”

A look something like relief crosses Abner’s face, and Leon thinks,  _Push_. He closes the gap between them.

Suddenly a voice rings out, carrying from the main cabin. “Hey everyone! LEON SUCKS!”

They both whirl toward it. “ _What_  did he just say?” Abner begins striding toward the cabin. “That little shit. I’ll fight him, I swear.”

It’s not really that far away, and the figure’s white hair and black clothes are unmistakable. Rain. Leon’s heart drops into his shoes. Diego must have spoken to him.

“Come on!” Rain shouts again. “They’re playing Leon’s song!”

 _Leon’s song_. He realizes his mistake, and his body floods with relief so palpable it weakens his knees.

“Oh!” Abner stops short. “That was  _not_  what I heard the first time.”

“Me either.”

“I was afraid I would have to go kick his ass,” Abner says. “Doubtless I would have come out the worse for the encounter, but I still would have gone down swinging for the worthy cause.”

Rain shouts once more. “Everyone! Get the fuck in here and dance!” He disappears into the cabin.

Abner grins at Leon. “I suppose we’d best get the fuck in there and dance.”

“Guess so.” For once, he says it with a smile.


	19. I Was Made for Dancin'

He lets the group at the fire pit make their way inside, hanging back instinctively.  _Make an entrance_.

When at last he joins them there are cheers, audible over the music. The floor isn’t as packed as it had been after the drag show, but it’s still a respectable crowd. He sways to the middle of it and strikes his famous disco pose, the one that has graced posters the world over.

“ _Leon!_ ” they scream.

“ _I was made for dancin’_ ” his own voice sings over the speakers, and he sets out to prove that it’s still true. “ _All-all-all all night long!_ ” This time there’s no ulterior motive in his gyrations, no sexual hunter on the prowl. He’s dancing for joy. To feel hot, to feel young. To feel like he’s part of something.

He spins, and when he comes to a stop, Rain is watching him.

They lock gazes across the floor. Neither smiles.

But neither looks away.

Something rises in Leon and lodges behind his breastbone. His feet are suddenly frozen in place. Words form unbidden, but get stuck in his throat.

_I’m sorry._

A knot of dancers moves between them, arms in the air. One comes up to Leon, and he engages, never one to deny a fan. They step together, legs interlacing, and rock to the beat. Even when their hips bump and grind, Leon doesn’t feel the familiar tug of desire. After a few bars of music he smiles gently and steps away, releasing his partner back to the dance floor.

When he looks up again, Rain is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made allowances within the game for characters to use real-world songs / lyrics as their own. All songs are used without permission.
> 
> “I Was Made for Dancin'” © Michael Lloyd, 1978.


	20. Last Dance

“Last dance,” Tony calls. He throws on something a little slower, and couples begin pairing off. Tony even gets up and embraces a slim, muscular man with the look of a dancer. Couples swirl past Leon, oblivious to the fact that he’s walking away alone.

He casts a furtive glance around the room before heading out. He’s not sure what he’d do if he saw Rain; he’s simultaneously relieved and disappointed when he doesn’t.

A larger crowd is beginning to gather near the fire pit. Dimly, he recalls something about sparklers at midnight, and some sort of green drink the hippies are handing out. He checks his watch: nearly twenty minutes to kill, and he’s not wild about spending it where he might run into Diego.

In the shadows, away from the fire, there’s a boy off by himself leaning against a picnic table. He’s sipping from a red Solo cup and staring somewhat vaguely at the gathering crowd. Something must strike him funny, because he suddenly giggles out of nowhere.

 _Howard_ , Leon suddenly remembers, and has a flashback to the kitchen assistant kneeling in front of a leather daddy in the pantry.

He approaches.

“Hey,” he says. “Howard, right?”

The boy startles as if brought out of a trance. “Uh, wha…” He shakes his head vigorously. “Uh. Leon?”

“Yeah.” He perches against the table, close enough to smell sweat and frying oil. “You catch my act earlier?”

“Oh, uh. Yeah. You were great.” He grins. “You still got it, Leon.”

Leon flashes his flirtiest smile. “Damn right I do.” He shifts, lets his shoulder slip behind Howard’s, and the boy seems to melt into him. “If you want,” he murmurs, and brings his other hand up to run his fingertip down the side of the boy’s neck and chest. Touches his waist. “I could give you a private show.”

Howard is wearing bright turquoise shorts… eye-jangling, but the thin material leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination as his cock goes from noticeable to rock-hard. His face and neck are scarlet, but he reaches for Leon’s hand and twines their fingers together. “Yeah,” he breathes, then glances nervously around. “Not here, though.”

For once, Leon doesn’t mind going somewhere private. There are too many eyes that he no longer wants to see him.

They move into the trees until the firelight fades away. No sooner are they in darkness than Howard spins, throws his arms around Leon, and pulls him in for a kiss.

For a moment, Leon feels himself stiffen. Aside from a few quick pecks with Chain, he hasn’t kissed anyone all night. Howard’s mouth is wet and hot, his tongue moving like a bludgeon, and his breath is nearly antiseptic. Leon can’t help wondering what exactly the boy has been drinking.

“Please… please fuck me,” Howard says as he breaks off.

There’s a note in his voice. Need. Desperation. It reaches in and touches something in Leon. Mutely, he nods.

Howard is meek and pliant as Leon gently turns him to face a tree. The boy’s body vibrates with a constant, fine quiver, and Leon runs his hands over his back, trying to soothe him. Squeezes his hips, his thighs, slips his hands under his shirt to massage his skin.

“You like this,” he says, though he’s not entirely sure who he’s saying it to. “You want me.”

The boy whimpers. “Yes. Yes, I want you. Please.”

He doesn’t have lube. He’ll have to improvise. “Take your shorts off,” he says, and watches, bemused, as Howard nearly falls over in his rush to strip. He opens his mouth to tell the boy to bend forward, but he’s already bracing against the tree. Eager. So he puts two fingers in his mouth, instead.

Then he pushes them into Howard.

The boy nearly leaps out of his skin. “Shh,” Leon says. He puts his other hand between Howard’s shoulder blades and presses, tender but firm. Curls his fingers inside him, feeling for the rough patch of skin over the prostate.

Howard wails aloud when he finds it, a long keening cry, almost like a sung note. “ _Please_ ,” he gasps, and his voice breaks. “I want you. Just – just take me. Fuck me.” He cuts off with a strangled sob.

In the back of his mind, Leon is aware that he isn’t really who Howard wants to be fucked by. But he ignores it, because it’s the same part of his mind that’s aware Howard isn’t who he really wants to be fucking.

He leans over the boy, lets him feel the heat of his body. Softly kisses the back of his neck. Withdraws his fingers. “Shh,” he whispers again. He unzips as quickly as he can.

It’s difficult to be gentle as he pushes his cock in with nothing but spit to aid him, but he does his best. He meets tight resistance for a moment, then suddenly something gives and he buries himself in Howard’s ass.

The scream that rips from the boy’s throat seems to shake the treetops. Leon freezes; surely it’s his imagination, but he would swear there’s a break in the low rumble of conversation that reaches them from the fire pit.

“Please,” Howard begs, and his voice is choking on tears. “Don’t stop.  _Please_.” He begins chanting, trancelike, a low litany of “Please, please, please, please…”

Leon grabs Howard’s hips and thrusts. Once, twice. He grimaces; the angle is all wrong. Taking a step back, he pulls the boy’s hips to him. “Like this.” And he thrusts again.

This time he knows he’s in the right spot. Howard goes utterly silent while his hands scrabble at the tree, holding on for dear life. His back, his shoulders, his ass begin to quake. Leon keeps up a steady rhythm, slow backstrokes, confident instrokes.

“Ohhhhh,” begins the low moan. The promise of orgasm, silver and shaking, dances along the edge of the sound. “Oh, myyyyyy…” He’s gasping, panting, ragged and rough.

Instinctively, Leon reaches one hand around Howard’s thigh and cups his balls. He gives a single gentle squeeze.

“GOOOOOOD!”

The cum shoots so hard it misses Leon’s hand and arm entirely, and from the splattering noises it’s possible it might be painting the tree. Howard’s knees wobble and give out, and only Leon grabbing his hips keeps him from sliding to the ground.

 _Wow,_  Leon thinks.  _This kid was beyond backed up_.

He hasn’t come yet, but he’s not actually certain he will. His attention begins wandering, back to the fire pit. Back to the porch. For the sake of appearances he thrusts a few more times, then does his best approximation of his own orgasmic groan, bucking his hips a couple times.

Somehow he doubts Howard even notices.

Howard seems to move in slow motion as he adjusts his shirt and pulls his shorts up. Leon half-turns to give him some semblance of privacy, taking his time as he wipes himself with a handkerchief from his pocket and tucks everything back in.

When he turns around, Howard’s face is streaked with tears, snot streaming from his nose. He reaches for Leon, and gives him a soft, chaste kiss.

Something breaks in Leon, and a rush of tenderness mixed with guilt and hope and despair washes over him. On an impulse, he wraps the boy in his arms, crushing him hard to his chest.

“Enjoy life,” he murmurs into Howard’s hair, the words rising out of him unbidden and unstoppable. “It goes by faster than you’ll know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This scene was also written up by another AO3er, doodledinmypants. [Check out their version of it here!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11854485)


	21. Green Drink

They’re already handing out sparklers when Leon returns to the fire, following a different route than Howard to allay suspicion. He spots an open seat by Sorrento and takes it, leaning against his elbow on the picnic table.

“Good night?” He hasn’t seen nearly as much of his friend as he would have liked. Hopefully he’s been off getting laid too.

“Pretty decent.” Sorrento grins. “I’ve gotten my share.” His eyes suddenly sparkle. “Remember last August at Fire Island?”

Leon’s own grin spreads. “Hell yeah.”

Sorrento doesn’t have to say more. He hands Leon a beer, and they tink the rims together before taking long, simultaneous pulls.

Sorrento belches impressively and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “I don’t even have to ask  _you_ ,” he says. “You’ve sort of been everywhere.” He raises an eyebrow. “I even heard you got into some poetry.”

Does Leon blush? He’s not even certain what that would feel like. “Something like that.”

Sorrento gives him a quizzical look. “Since when are you so mysterious?”

The arrival of Pen distributing sparklers saves him from answering. They get to their feet along with everyone else. There are lighters making their way around the circle, but Abner, next to him, decides not to wait. He strides to the center of the ring and lights directly from the fire.

“To motherfucking America!” he shouts, and offers the spark on his wand to others. Showers of gold begin coruscating throughout the crowd.

Something is happening, Leon realizes. His skin prickles with a charge in the air. It runs over his arms like electricity, makes his breath catch. He raises his sparkler and finds himself twirling, drawing loops and whorls that leave glowing trails in his wake. Laughter bubbles up from his chest. It joins the other voices rising to the stars.

“Green,” says a voice, booming over the tumult, “is the color of life, vibrant and strong.”

The crowd slowly falls silent and turns to face Kohana. He holds up a glass of a green liquid that luminesces in his hand. Kim and Joani are circling the courtyard with trays containing more glasses. Leon takes one when it reaches him.

“Revitalize yourself with its power,” Kohana says. His voice resonates, ripe with weight and wisdom far beyond his young-looking face. “Let it wash over you and change you.”

Kim, her tray of drinks depleted, steps up to his side and raises her own glass. “Learn, grow, and thrive,” she says. “Drink and be vital. Be vibrant.”

They look at each other, a fond gaze that speaks of pain and joy and love shared and lost, a lifetime of friendship condensed into a single moment. They turn again as one, lift their glasses even higher, and speak the word together: “Live.”

It tastes of lime and mint and ginger, at first. It sparkles on his tongue.

The flavor shifts as he swallows. A hint of bitterness, then slow sweetness and, curiously, heat. It radiates through him. It touches his chest, his belly, his neck, spreads to his fingertips and toes, fills him up to bursting.  _Live_ , it seems to whisper.  _Live._

 _Live_.

And deep inside him… something changes.


	22. Fire and Rain

He can’t describe what’s happening. How do you describe a whole new world? How do you describe the flavor of starlight, the color of music, the fragrance of love? How do you describe fire to a mermaid, or sunlight to a creature that has spent its life in shadow?

Leon smirks to himself at that last thought. He doubts anyone here would believe he’s even heard of Plato.

The path opens itself before him, bright and clear in his mind, like petals unfolding, like mists clearing, like the doors thrown wide on a breaking dawn. He knows what he needs to do.

He finds him on the far side of the fire. “Rain.”

Rain turns around slowly and their eyes meet, green locked with blue. Words fly up Leon’s throat, piling one upon the other into a tangled barricade, each fighting to escape first. He can feel the pleading look in his eyes, and he doesn’t care. At long last, he manages to choke out the two words that matter most.

“I’m sorry.”

Tension crackles between them, stretches out like taffy. Icy tendrils snake through Leon’s chest, into his belly. He’s too late. He’s gone too far. Something pricks at his eyes and he’s astounded to realize it’s the beginning of tears.

Rain reaches for his hand, and Leon’s heart starts beating again.

“I was afraid,” he says. “Of poetry, of you, of…” He swallows. “Of myself. Seeing you on stage…” He steps closer, lifts his free hand. Touches Rain’s collarbone lightly. Tentatively. “I’m empty.” He hears the bottomless pain in his own hollow voice. “I don’t want to be empty anymore.”

_How does it feel to really be seen?_

Another step, and their bodies are nearly touching. “You see me,” he whispers, eyes closing against the tears that are coming anyway. “You’re the only one who ever has.”

Fingers tighten on his other hand, and Rain brings it up between them. Presses it to his heart. Their heads begin to tilt together.

“Rain?”

Storm clouds darken Simon’s face. His eyes bore into them. “I wanted… I thought…” At his sides, his hands are balled into fists.

Rain takes a step toward Simon, a step away from Leon.  _No_.

“Simon,” he says. “I know.” His voice is husky, and his face tender and sad. “You’re my best friend in the world. And I…” One of his hands still holds Leon’s. The other reaches for Simon. “I know you.” Then he looks at Leon. “And I  _want_  to know  _you_.” He tugs on Leon’s hand, and he realizes Rain is trying to pull the three of them together. “Why don’t we go,” Rain says, “and get to know  _each other?_ ”

It feels to Leon as if the whole world holds its breath. He watches Simon and tries not to let his agony show on his face.

“Fuck that,” Simon says at last. “I’m out.” He turns to leave, then suddenly whirls back and takes a menacing step toward Leon. “If you hurt him…”

Leon takes a deep breath and looks Simon in the eye. “I won’t.”

For a moment he’s genuinely afraid the other man may punch him. He tenses, and whether he’s ready to fight or flee, he couldn’t really say.

Simon’s eyes narrow and his body quivers with rage. “I’ll fucking kill you.” And with that he stalks off into the dark.


	23. Under the Stars

Rain takes both of Leon’s hands and laces their fingers together. “Do you want to take a walk,” he asks, “and look at the stars?”

Leon nods. It’s all he can seem to manage at the moment. They walk away from the firelight, slowly, hand-in-hand. “Tell me about art,” he says when he finds his voice again.

“Well,” Rain says. “What does art mean to you?”

“I… ” He lets out a self-deprecating chuckle. “I don’t know how to begin to answer that.” He steals a sidelong glance at Rain, just in time to catch him doing the same. Happy warmth suffuses his face, and he realizes that perhaps  _this_  is what a blush feels like. When was the last time he grinned like a shy idiot? “I don’t think I’ve made art in a very long time. Once, maybe.”

“It’s still in you,” Rain says, squeezing his fingers, still twined with his own. “You just need to find it again.”

Something overwhelms Leon, stealing his breath. He stops, looks at Rain, brings a hand to his cheek. The next thing he knows he’s pushed him against the bell tower, the one they ring for dinner, and his mouth is on Rain’s. Lips part, tongues touch, and they open to each other. One of his hands is on the back of Rain’s neck, the other on his chest, and he has no memory of putting them there. Nor of when Rain’s wrapped around to the small of his back.

They break off, both breathing hard. Leon’s fingers come up to trace Rain’s lower lip. “I want…”

Rain takes his face in both hands. “Yes,” he says, and pulls him in to kiss again. Their lips melt together, and Leon feels Rain starting to go hard against his leg. Himself responding in kind.

Sounds of laughter interrupt them, and Leon squints at an approaching flashlight. Five, perhaps six people walk past. With the light in his eyes, he can’t tell who they are, but one scornful voice floats out of the pack. “Another one? I saw him with Skye earlier!”

Heat flushes over his cheeks again, but this time it’s anything but happy. “Shit,” he says, taking a step away and withdrawing his hands to clutch his own elbows. “That’s… yeah. That’s true.”

Amazingly, Rain doesn’t look especially upset. Or upset at all, really. “What happened with him?”

Does he want to hear this? “Not a whole lot.”

“Meaning?” He sounds more curious than concerned.

“Meaning he couldn’t get off, and we gave up.”

“Ha!” Rain pushes himself up off the bell tower. “What about you?”

Leon shrugs. “I didn’t ask, and he didn’t offer.”

“That’s Skye, alright. My brother is nothing if not self-absorbed.” Rain takes Leon’s hands again, unwrapping him from himself. “Let’s get further away.” He slips both arms around Leon’s waist, steps in for another kiss. “Away from all the lights. Somewhere we can see the stars.” Leaving one arm where it is, he begins walking across the field, drawing Leon along with him.

“You don’t seem to like him very much.”

“Skye?” Rain begins gesturing with his free hand, a motion Leon is coming to recognize as frustration with his own inability to keep up when his thoughts starts spinning ahead. “Skye, he’s, he’s – he’s my brother, and I, y’know, of course, of course – I love him, but we’re, we’re – we’re too different. He, he, he – he just leaves me to, to – to be in charge while he runs around and, and – and spends money, and I can’t, I can’t – ” He breaks off and puts his hand to his forehead. “I can’t keep up with him, and, and – and I think – I think he just hates me.”

“That can’t be true,” Leon says, though the words lack conviction. By some unspoken agreement they come to a stop near the sleeping cabins and both turn their faces up to the night sky. The slight gap they kept between their bodies while walking closes again.

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

Leon turns his face and touches his forehead to Rain. “Do you have a poem about them?” The words are barely more than a whisper into the curve of his ear.

“I don’t – I don’t – ” Rain ducks his head, embarrassed. “I don’t, don’t – don’t memorize them. I, I – I write them down, and, and – and Skye – Skye sings them. It’s, it’s – it’s Skye who, who – who gives them life.”

Leon waits.

“Stars are never sleeping,” Rain begins after a long pause. His voice is pitched low and he takes on a cadence, different from his own, smoothing the line in places he would normally emphasize. “Dead ones and the living.”

He stops abruptly and grimaces at Leon. “You don’t want to hear this.”

Tightening his arm around Rain’s waist, Leon kisses his hair. “I do. Go on.”

Rain takes a deep breath. “We live closer to the earth, never to the heavens. The stars are never far away. Stars are out tonight.”

He breaks off again and steps out of Leon’s embrace. “It’s, it’s – it’s shit, I, I – I probably won’t even finish it.” He stuffs both hands in his pockets and stares up at the sky.

Leon moves up behind the boy and slips his hands under his elbows to wrap around his waist. Pulls him close, ducks his head to nuzzle Rain’s jaw.

The boy turns in his arms. Puts his own around Leon’s neck. Their heads come together, the kiss slow and sweet, opening softly into an exploration of tastes and breath and occasional bumping teeth and ensuing laughter. Arms tighten, and hands touch and caress from faces to shoulders to backs to hips, until sweetness gives way to heat.

They find their way under a tree and stretch out on the grass, already beading with dew.

“I want you,” Leon whispers, pressing himself into Rain’s hip. Their legs are interlaced, Rain’s hands stroking his chest as Leon holds himself above the boy, leaning in to kiss his forehead, his eyes, his temples. Both their breath is coming hard and fast, uneven gasps of desire.

“Yes,” Rain whispers back. “Yes.” He reaches for Leon’s zipper as Leon does the same, fumbling over each other in their eagerness, laughing as hands and arms collide, and linger every time they touch. Finally they get each others’ pants off, legs still tangling up as they twist and rearrange. Leon gets up on his knees and undoes his shirt; Rain does the same as soon as he sees him. They embrace again, naked skin on naked skin, warmth seeping into one another as they share another passionate kiss.

“Turn over,” Leon says at last. They tumble onto all fours. Leon moves behind Rain, then he realizes: he has only spit again, and this… this doesn’t seem like the moment for it. “Oh, hell.”

“What’s wrong?” Rain twists his head to look over his shoulder.

“I don’t… fuck!” He holds his erection lightly in one hand. “I forgot to grab lube. Or… I mean, I didn’t even think…”

Rain suddenly laughs, a spontaneous outburst that ends in an undignified snort. “My shirt pocket,” he says. “Sorrento… earlier…” He collapses and rolls to one side, his shoulders shaking with barely-contained mirth. “He left it with me after we…” He stops to gasp for air. “I can’t forget this: he said, ‘Take it, kid, and use it in good health.'”

Leon throws his head back and joins in the laughter. “Oh my god,” he says. “That’s Sorrento.” He extricates himself from between Rain’s legs and pats around blindly in the dark, looking for the discarded shirt. Finally finds it, with a tiny bottle of lube in the pocket, just where Rain said it would be.

“Okay,” he says. “I’m ready.”

Rain gets up on his knees to kiss Leon once more, hard and hungry, hands closing tight on fists full of hair. “I’m ready too.”

And they begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made allowances within the game for characters to use real-world songs / lyrics as their own. All songs are used without permission.
> 
> “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)” © David Bowie, 2013


	24. Where I Love You

Warmth, and pressure, and skin gliding smooth against skin. Sighs and moans, gasps and cries, and yes, grunts and groans and utterances of “Wait, not quite,” and “What if you…?”

Leon wants to feel every inch of Rain. He doesn’t want to rush; he moves slowly, taking his time with every stroke and thrust, running his hands over Rain’s skin as if to read him through his palms. He hasn’t had sex like this in years, since he was still a teenager, shy and eager and uncertain and fumbling to figure out what pieces went where. He wonders when he became so jaded, when sex became something done out of lust or boredom or the need for conquest and validation, rather than an act of love, or at least of care.

Unexpectedly, he remembers Esmerelda, Diego’s mother. He’d tried to love her, he really had. He wishes she’d told him she got pregnant… wishes he’d bothered to stay in touch. Wonders how the world might have been different if he’d known his son all these years.

He wonders what those hippies put in that fucking drink.

Rain moves against him, pressing back into Leon, and Leon shifts until he can slip a hand around the boy’s thigh and wrap him in his palm. He times the thrust of his hips with the stroke of his hand, aware of how Rain’s breath shortens and catches as Leon brings him closer. “Oh… god…” It’s like last time, except different, slower, filled with more want and need and tension and suspense.

He comes in Leon’s hand, his body going rigid while his cock pulses and jerks. Leon holds him tight until he’s finished, his free arm slipping up under Rain’s chest to embrace him. When at last Rain takes a deep breath and relaxes, he rises back up onto his knees and begins a steady rocking motion, pushing himself deep inside. Taking his time, enjoying every sensation.

As much as he tries to hold back, he can tell his moment is approaching. He moves faster, thrusts harder, unable to stop himself. “Rain,” he whispers, his eyes closed in growing ecstasy. His hands move to clutch the boy’s hips, and he feels himself crossing the point of no return. When orgasm overtakes him he lets out a wordless cry, ripped from his chest through his throat and swallowed up by the velvet night. He collapses over Rain’s back, breath coming in panting gasps, feeling the thud of his heart and the swell of Rain’s chest as they breathe together.

When he finally returns to himself he rolls to the ground next to Rain, while his lover does the same. Their hands find each other at their sides, wrists pressed together and fingers interlocked, a bridge where heartbeat meets heartbeat through fragile skin.

“I’ve never,” Leon says, then pauses, searching for the right words. “I’ve never done anything quite like that before.” They both gaze into the sky, eyes filled with the stars that brought them to this place.

“Whatever happens next,” Rain replies, “I will always have this, a perfect frozen moment, preserved in crystal. Where the dark and the stars and you and I are, forever. This moment, this place, where I love you.”

Lightning lances straight to Leon’s heart, leaving him dizzy and breathless. He squeezes Rain’s hand harder, holding on for dear life as the world spins out of control.

“And where I love you.”


	25. Not What I Wanted

“I need to talk to you.” Simon’s voice, unamused, cuts through the peace and stillness.

Even at a party full of public nudity and sex, Leon is viscerally unwilling to have what sounds likely to be a hostile conversation while lying fully naked on the ground. He grabs for his pants, and is grateful to see that Simon has at least turned away while he and Rain dress themselves.

“Um.” Leon looks uncertainly at Rain while he buttons his shirt. “Should… should I leave?”

“You can if you want,” Rain says. “But I think whatever Simon has to say to me, he can say it to you too.”

It’s what Leon wanted to hear, but somehow it doesn’t make him feel any better.

Simon glances over one shoulder and turns around when he sees they’re both at least wearing pants. “Jesus Christ,” he growls. “I come to find you and you’re… you’re…” He sweeps his arm to indicate the ground where Leon and Rain have just been curled together.

“Hey man,” Leon says, his eyebrows knitting together quizically. “You  _knew_. What the hell else did you think he was talking about back there?”

Simon’s face twists. “I didn’t think you’d still be going at it. I mean, what the fuck?”

“Simon.” Rain’s voice is soothing. “This, this – this doesn’t have to, to, to – to come between us. You’re, you’re – you’re my best friend, and, and – and I don’t want to, to – to lose that.”

“I come here to tell you… to tell you…  _fuck!_ ” He clutches his head with both hands then turns his glare full-force on Leon. “And what the  _fuck_  does that look on your face mean?”

Leon realizes he’s been staring in open-mouthed confusion. “I don’t – I don’t – ” He looks helplessly at Rain. “I don’t understand at all what’s going on here.”

Disgust curls Simon’s mouth into a snarl. “No, you  _wouldn’t_ , would you? What the fuck would  _you_  know about – about – ” He stomps in a circle and tears at his hair again. “I know you thought you could just  _solve_  everything,” he says, turning back to Rain. “But it wasn’t what  _I_  wanted.”

Realization dawns for Leon, and with it the need to defend both himself and Rain. “It wasn’t what I wanted either.” His eyes narrow, and his voice carries a hint of challenge.

For long seconds the two men stare each other down. Rain makes another attempt to break the tension. “Simon, this doesn’t, doesn’t – doesn’t  _change_  anything. We, we – we still have the band, we – we still have each other, we…” He trails off, for once seeming to run completely out of words.

Simon’s hands drop slowly to his sides and he sighs, an exhalation full of defeat. “Yeah,” he says. “It does.” For a moment he seems to waver on the edge of saying something more.

Rain takes Leon’s hand.

Simon clenches his jaw and nods. “So that’s it. You’ve had your ‘perfect frozen  _fucking_ moment.'” He spits the words, bitter poison-tipped darts aimed straight at Rain, who flinches when they hit. The two look at each other, one pleading, one furious, while Leon waits helplessly to see which will break first.

Finally, just as he’d done earlier at the fire pit, Simon clenches his fists and takes a menacing step toward Leon. “Don’t. You. Fucking. Hurt him.”

This time Leon stands up straighter and returns the look defiantly. “I don’t plan to.” Charged silence mounts between them.

“Fucking  _hell_ ,” Simon says at last. He turns and walks away.

“Okay,” Leon says when the other man is out of earshot. “What the hell was  _that_  all about?”

Rain waves a dismissive hand, shaking his head. “That’s just, just – just Simon,” he says. “He, he – he gets angry, he just has to, to – to get it – get it out of his system.”

Leon looks in the direction Simon that walked off. “Is he in love with you?”

“Yes.” Rain doesn’t shy away from it. “But we’re, we’re – we’re just too, too – too different, we’re always just in, in – in the same place at, at – at different times. I zig, and he zags. We just can’t seem to, to – to ever meet in the middle.” He squeezes Leon’s hand. “He’ll be fine. We, we – we fight all the time, but, but, but – but we’re still a band, we’re – we’re practically brothers.”

Leon takes a deep breath. “So… what are  _we_  now? I’ve… god. I’ve never been someone who wanted a… you know. A relationship.” He glances nervously at Rain. “But I… I don’t know. Is that something you… want?” He feels like a moron, fumbling for simple words.

“A relationship? I don’t want a relationship.”

For a moment Leon’s entire body goes cold.

“I just want to be with you,” Rain finishes.

“How exactly is that different?”

“Well, we don’t need to, to, to – to put some, some – some word, some thing that, you know, what, what – what does it even, even mean, when – ”

Leon feels a stupid, relieved grin stretch over his face, and puts his thumb on Rain’s lips, cutting him off mid-sentence. “You think too much,” he says, and kisses him again. “Okay,” he says when it ends. “So we’re together. That works for me.”

“Good.” They wrap their arms around each other’s waists and start walking back to the main cabin.

“So now what?”

“Now,” Rain says, “I see you at breakfast tomorrow. Unfortunately I can’t be around for very long, I have to catch an early bus to get the sound equipment back to New York. But we’ll see each other back in the city.” He turns toward Leon as they reach the back door. “And we’ll be here, together, next year.”

“Okay,” Leon says. They embrace, kiss once more. “Next year.”


	26. Father of the Year

There’s still something he has to do. And it’s going to be much, much harder than apologizing to Rain: he needs to apologize to Diego.

It’s past one in the morning, but Leon has at least learned a  _little_  about his son in the time they’re shared his penthouse, and by Diego’s standards, the night is barely getting started. He checks the dancing still going on the main hall: no Diego. No sign of him at the fire pit either. It’s always possible the boy is off in the trees with someone, but considering his vehement expression of distaste for the practice earlier, Leon doubts it. Which really only leaves one place: the Dark Room.

 _I’m sorry._  He rehearses the words as he makes the walk from the fire pit to the cabin that houses the hookup space. Has it always been this long?  _I don’t know what I’m doing, but I want to do better. I can’t change what I’ve done in the past, but I can try to change the future_.

Diego is on the Dark Room porch with Sorrento and Claire. They’re look like they’re deep in conversation. Diego is leaning against the porch rail and Claire has her arm around him, but all three fall silent when they see Leon approaching. He stops at the bottom of the stairs.

There’s a long moment of silence. “Leon,” Diego says at length. “How was Rain?” His voice drips with sarcasm and scorn.

“Rain was…” This is the last thing he wants to talk about right now. “Good.” He puts a foot on the bottom step.

Diego stands up without another word, brushes past Leon, and begins walking away. Claire gives Leon a scathing look, then hurries after him. Sorrento lingers a moment, and his expression is unreadable. Then he walks away as well.

Leon opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He watches as the three stop under a tree, away from the porch light, and stand in a tight circle. Sorrento pats Diego’s shoulder. Then he twists his head, looking directly at Leon. It’s nearly impossible to tell from here, but Leon would swear Sorrento shakes his head.

Frustration and despair well up in him. How can he even try to set things right if nobody will talk to him? He lingers for long agonized moments, his hand on the porch railing.

Then he makes up his mind.

By the time he reaches them, frustration has won out amongst his warring emotions. He holds his hands out to his sides in an affronted shrug as he approaches. “So, what,” he says to Sorrento, “you’re against me now too?”

The look Sorrento gives him is angry, pitying, and apologetic all at the same time. “Someone has to look after the kid.”

“I’m…” Diego mumbles to the ground. “I’m going to crash on Sorrento’s couch for a couple weeks.”

It feels like a punch in the gut. Leon wants to cry, but takes a deep breath instead and nods. “Okay.”

Across from him, Claire explodes. “‘Okay?  _Okay?_ ‘ Your son tells you he’s going couch-surfing, and all you can say is ‘ _OKAY?!_ ‘” She lunges at him.

“Whoa!” Sorrento grabs her around the waist, stopping her clawed hand from swiping Leon. “C’mon. The kid needs space. Leon’s giving it to him.”

“He won’t even fight for his son!” she says. Sorrento releases her and she looks like she still might like to attack him, but restrains herself.

“I’m sorry,” Leon says. The words leave him feeling hollow. They were supposed to be a peace offering, not a plea for mercy. “Do what you need to do.”

“Don’t you even  _care?_ ” Claire snaps.

“I do care!” Leon says, his voice rising in frustration. “I know I haven’t been a great father –”

“No, you’ve been a fucking  _terrible_  father! You’re so busy fucking around and doing drugs, you don’t even see how messed up he’s getting. You’re so fucking selfish!”

“ _I know!_  I know, and I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know how to be a father.”

“Maybe if you had fucking bothered to be around!”

He raises his hands, a gesture of helpless anger. “I didn’t know! How was I supposed to be there when I didn’t know?”

“You could have bothered to find out!”

Leon stares at her for a long moment, mouth opening and closing wordlessly a few times. “What do you want from me?” he says finally.

“Be a fucking  _father_ ,” she growls.

“ _I’m trying!_ ” he snaps back. “I… he… this…” He shakes his head to clear it. “Things are changing for me, but… I can’t change the past, and I can’t make him stay where he doesn’t want to stay. He needs some space, I’m gonna respect that.”

She finally shuts up for a moment, and Leon seizes the opportunity to turn to Diego.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “If you need to go, go. I know I’ve been awful and I… I came over here to tell you so. To tell you I want to do better. To  _be_  better.”

Diego looks at him warily, but doesn’t say anything yet.

“I don’t know what I’m doing. I never knew my father. But I… I…” He feels the corners of his mouth drawing down, his brows coming together and his eyes filling with desperation. “I just want a chance. When you’re done doing… whatever you need to do… when you’re ready… I hope you’ll just give me another chance.”

Leon’s gut ties itself in knots as the charged silence stretches out once more.

“I’m gonna look for my own place,” Diego says at last. “But I’ll… I’ll…” He glances down, and Leon remembers how incredibly young and vulnerable he really is. He feels like utter shit.

“Give me some time,” Diego says. “But then… maybe we can talk.”

Leon nods miserably. He wants to say so much more. Wants to throw himself on the ground and beg for forgiveness. And knows he doesn’t deserve it.

“Okay.” He glances at Claire, whose face is still murderous, and then Sorrento, who looks a good deal more sympathetic than before. Sorrento puts a hand on Leon’s shoulder.

“I’ll take care of him.”

“Okay,” Leon says again, still nodding helplessly. “Okay.”

Sorrento moves his hand from Leon to Diego, and Claire keeps her glare on him for as long as she can while also moving to embrace his son. The three begin walking away again, their heads bending together.

And Leon lets them go.


	27. The Unbroken Chain

There’s no Diego. No Sorrento. Rain is no doubt asleep so he can be up for his early bus, and Leon is unwilling to wake his lover of less than one day over a fight with his son. He tries to think of the list of other friends he could look for, even if they  _were_  awake, and comes up empty.

He stands there, under the tree where his son and best friend left him, for a long time.

When he finally decides to move, he looks around. His sleeping cabin is across the field, but he can’t imagine how he would fall asleep right now. Quaaludes, maybe. But when he takes them from his pocket and considers them, the idea is unappealing. He can’t face the fake smiles and mocking whispers up at the main hall, so he does the only other thing he can think of: he goes into the Dark Room.

The dungeon room, where the leather daddies do their whipping and flogging, where Chain had cuffed and fucked him earlier, is empty. The door to the middle room is closed. In the hookup space, porn splashes across the cabin wall while Nate and Sinclair writhe on one of the beds. There’s no-one else. No-one he might have random sex with, even if he’d wanted it. Not anyone he can talk to. The images of cocks being sucked and assholes being fucked, projected larger than life, seem so bright they burn his eyes.

Quietly, he sits down on a bunk. Nate and Sinclair ignore him. He does the same.

The sounds of sex – both taped and real – blur together, and he lets desperation and loneliness and despair settle into his skin, flood his veins, and fill up his bones. Rain loves him, and in this moment that’s the single point of light that pins him to the world, but it also reveals the rest of the truth: Rain is the only one. His throat swells with tears, but there are so many things to cry for that they simply clog up, unshed, forming an unbearable heavy aching weight behind his eyes.

He couldn’t really say how much time passes.

Men emerge from the closed middle room and voices drip over him, muddy and meaningless. “Oh god,” one says, though he doesn’t really hear it. “I  _cannot_  deal with sad Leon right now.”

Nor does he see as Enrique puts his arm around the glaring Simon and leads him from the cabin.

It’s only the sensation of hands on his arms and shoulders that brings him, finally, swimming up from the black depths. “Leon?” Chain’s handsome face floats before him, brows knitted with concern. “Are you okay?”

He tries to open his mouth. Tries to flash his seductive grin and say, “Yeah, baby, I’m fine.” Instead his head betrays him and shakes from side to side, long and slow and sad.

Chain’s smile is gentle, and his eyes are unexpectedly kind. “Come on,” he says, taking Leon’s hands into his own. “Come with me.”

Leon finds himself powerless to resist as Chain stands him up and leads him out of the cabin. They walk down the path, away from the main cabin, down toward the hippies and the spirituals in their Pillow Room, the place where his eyes were opened and all this shit began. He doesn’t want to go. They’ll just mess him up some more. But the arm Chain keeps wrapped around Leon is so comforting, so warm. He wants more of that. Not sex, not drugs, not to fuck or be fucked. Just to be held. So he’ll go wherever Chain goes.

Andrew, one of Chain’s leather brothers, and Bret, a fresh-faced kid he met briefly earlier, are already there. They aren’t doing much of anything, just lying on the heap of blankets and pillows, Bret’s back to Andrew’s chest and Andrew’s arm draped over the younger man. “We’re joining you,” Chain says, not leaving it open to question. “Lay down,” he tells Leon.

Bret raises his arm. “Come on in.” No sooner does Leon move into the boy’s embrace than Chain is in his own, the four of them lying front-to-back like spoons nestled in a drawer. He is surrounded, enfolded, safe and cocooned. Bret’s arm does nothing more than wrap around his waist and hold him, and he does the same to Chain. He sinks into a sea of bodies and blankets and lingering incense and soft red light, and something inside him breaks.

The sorrows in his head line up, forming a single burning thread that unspools as the tears find their way free. They slide hot and silent down his face from under closed eyes, and are accepted without judgement by the pillow where they land. He breathes through his mouth, shallow but steady, keeping his chest from shaking, burying the tears as he lets them go.

More men wander in. “Are we having a leather cuddle?” one says. “A leather cuddle with a Leon,” Chain tells him, and the others join. Yet more arrive, and soon Leon couldn’t really say how many men are lying together, only that they form an unbroken chain of acceptance and care. He thinks of Rain’s arms. He thinks of the first boy he ever kissed. He thinks of his mother, engulfing him in her unconditional love. Eventually the well of his tears runs dry, and he breathes. Just breathes.

“Do you need to go to bed?” Chain whispers over his shoulder.

Leon shakes his head. “No. I’m good here.” He shifts until his head is cradled in the space between his own shoulder and Chain’s. “I’m good right here.”

Silence steals over the cabin, and soon behind it, sleep.


	28. Morning After

He wakes in the watery pale half-light before dawn. Around him men have shifted, sprawled, and spread, and gentle snoring blankets the room in a drowse-inducing haze. Leon nearly succumbs to it, then remembers: early bus. He has to get up now to have any hope of seeing Rain before he’s gone.

Chain stirs as Leon begins collecting himself. “Are you leaving?” He rolls over and puts his hand on Leon’s knee.

Leon takes his hand and squeezes it, leans over to kiss the boy’s temple. “Yeah. There’s someone I need to find.”

The boy gives him a look that’s both quizzical and disappointed, and Leon wonders what might have changed for Chain when he drank the hippies’ potion as well. He’s always been a fun but flighty boy, their interactions light and flirtatious without the slightest hint of attachment.

The Chain who brought him out of the Dark Room last night, who cuddled and held him in his despair, the Chain who now reaches invitingly for him to come back to sleep, is a stranger in familiar clothing, and one Leon half-wishes he had time to get to know. But the words “I love you” have faded behind the curtain of night, and Leon needs to hear them again in the daylight, to know they are still real.

“I’ll see you later,” he says, releasing Chain’s hand, and leaves the rest of them to their sleep.

The grass is thick with dew and Leon walks through it in his socks, the platforms he’d taken off the night before dangling from his hand by their laces. He’s still wearing those gold lamé disco pants, and not entirely sure how he managed to sleep in them, but they, and his sopping wet socks, and everything else he’s wearing are soon peeled off and discarded at his cabin. He wraps a towel around his waist and heads to the shower.

Standing at the sink, he looks in the mirror for several long moments. When did his face start looking so tired? So old? He considers for a few more minutes. Then he picks up his razor.

***

“Well,” Abner says when Leon joins the small group who are already eating breakfast, “this is a new look for you, Leon.”

He’s wearing a pair of bell-bottomed jeans and a daishiki, black on green with red and yellow details. His hair is still wet and slicked-down, and he’s put aside the purple party sunglasses for a simple pair of clear rectangles, the ones he usually only wears backstage or at home. A Leon without shades is, these days, nearly unrecognizable.

But what everyone turns slowly to stare at is his mustache. Or, more accurately, his lack thereof.

“Change the look, change the man?” He sets his plate of potatoes and eggs down across from Abner and swings a leg over the bench.

“Now that’s an interesting question,” Abner says, looking around to include Eli and Jerrod in the conversation. “Surely a man’s appearance does not define his person, but often a change in the person often  _leads_  to a change in appearance. So  _could_  a man help facilitate his own growth through an intentional outward change?”

Leon tunes them out while he glances surreptitiously about for Rain. He didn’t see him when he first entered the cabin, so he looks up every time the door opens, in hopes of seeing him come in.

Rain’s name being spoken by Jerrod brings him back to the conversation. Abner is laughing, evidently in response. “No,” he says, “he elected not to join us this morning. It looks like he’s into Walter now.”

Leon freezes with a forkful of food halfway to his mouth, then remembers himself and sets it down, trying to appear nonchalant. “Really? I thought Walter belonged to Steven.”

Abner shrugs. “You’d have to ask him. Rain’s over there making moon eyes at him right now.” He jerks his chin to indicate the back corner of the cabin.

It would be too obvious to jump up now, so Leon simply looks in that direction, then takes a few more bites of breakfast before standing up and excusing himself with a simple, “Gentlemen.” He makes a point of taking his plate to the kitchen and nodding to a completely different table before he heads toward the back of the room.

As he walks past, whispered words all around jump up to nip at his heels: “Leon and Rain?  _Really?”_

How? How has word spread this fast? Is it already over? Has Rain finally realized the laughingstock Leon truly is and moved on? Or is his love like quicksilver, coming and going as easily as the word itself?

Is he already telling the story of the gullible old fool who fell for Rain’s greatest performance?

He’s at the furthest corner, his back to the rest of the room, in conversation with Walter just as Abner said. Leon’s stomach ties itself in a complicated knot when he sees the familiar white wig, the same tight black shirt, the shape of the beautiful body it covers while hiding next to nothing. His anguish must be evident on his face, because when Walter glances up, he immediately says, “Leon? You alright?” His look takes in Leon’s shaved face, but he doesn’t mention it.

Rain turns toward him, seeming to move in slow motion, and in those few endless seconds Leon feels his heart shrivel, crumble, and begin to blow away. Then Rain holds out his hands with a look of puzzled concern, and his face is dawn breaking over Leon’s world. “Leon. I heard you were sad last night,” he says, and rises to take Leon’s hands in his own.

“Yeah, I guess. I had… a bit of a fight with Diego.”

“Is everything alright?”

“It’s… as much as it can be right now, I guess.” They sit back down together, and Rain keeps hold of one his hands. Leon can’t help seeing Walter take notice.

“What happened?”

Leon shakes his head. “Something that probably should have happened a while ago.”

Rain still looks concerned, but he squeezes Leon’s hand, then shifts to put his arm around him instead, and pulls him close.

“So you two are…” Walter trails off, looking at them.

“We’re together,” Rain says, and the ease with which he says the words melts away the last of Leon’s doubts. His face turns to Rain’s, Rain’s turns to him, and their lips come together.

It’s no more than a brief kiss, but the significance leaves Leon momentarily speechless. “I like this,” Rain says, brushing his fingertips over Leon’s newly-bare upper lip. “It makes you look younger. You know…” A smile that’s nearly shy spreads over his face, “I should tell you… you’re the reason I knew I was gay.”

“Wait, really?”

“I had that poster of you… you know, the album cover, the one with you in the tight pants, and that mane of hair?”

Leon nods, remembering. He was even younger than Rain is now when that picture was taken. “You must have been pretty young.”

“I was twelve. And I had such a huge crush on you.”

Leon has no idea what to say, so he doesn’t. He just kisses Rain again.

“I have to go soon,” Rain says when it ends. “The equipment’s loaded up, but I wanted to see you before we left.” Leon must look sad, because Rain touches his cheek and smiles. “But don’t worry. We’re going to see each other back in the city. We’ll figure it out.” He rises to leave, and Leon stands with him.

“Come to Studio 54,” he blurts. “I’ll tell Sorrento to get you in the show.”

“We should do a show  _together_.” A horn sounds in the parking lot, and Rain glances over his shoulder and back, looks pained and apologetic. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I have to go. But I’ll see you soon, love.” He kisses Leon once more, a quick but soft brush of their lips, then hurries out through the door to the parking lot.

 _Love_.


	29. Party's Over

Leon walks on clouds back to the table where half the Literary Circle are arguing over some new topic. Now he  _knows_  he’s not imagining the whispers; they’ve risen to surprised and quickly-shushed exclamations at various tables: “Leon and  _Rain?_ ”

Well, fuck them. He sits down across from Abner, and says it aloud: “Fuck them.”

“Always a reasonable attitude,” Abner says with a nod.

“Leon, let me ask you,” Eli says, leaning forward on his elbow. “Do you think it’s possible for an older man to truly have a loving and  _respectful_  relationship with a younger one?”

Surely the question is aimed at him and Rain, he thinks, until he notices the wary look Eli shoots at Abner, and the cautionary one he gets in return.  _Watch it_ , that look says.

“Wellll,” he says, drawing the word out. “I think so, probably. I don’t think there’s just one way that works for everyone.”

“I see more coffee.” Abner stands up abruptly. “I shall return to continue this conversation once I am capable of linear thought.”

“What about you?” Leon says to Eli. “Do you think a  _younger_  man can really be happy with an older one?”

If Eli has any clue Leon is thinking of Rain – unlikely in the first place – he doesn’t show it. “I think it’s a question of whether the older one can treat the younger like an equal instead of a student.” His eyes don’t leave Abner, who is still fussing with a cup of coffee.

“And if he does? Does the younger man need more excitement than the older has to offer?”

“That’s not the problem,” Eli says, and Leon gives up. This is a one-sided conversation; he just happens to be the wall Eli is bouncing his thoughts off of.

Kimberly, the woman who photographs Diego in his underwear, sits down on Leon’s right. She doesn’t acknowledge him, and a quick survey of the room suggests she likely only sat here because space at the breakfast tables is running out. But a thought occurs to Leon, and he turns briefly to her.

“Kimberly.” She gives him a level look.

“I won’t bother you for long,” he says. “But I know you work with Diego, and he’s… not really speaking to me at the moment.”

Her only response is an unimpressed lift of her eyebrows.

“I’m not asking you to intervene or anything like that. Just… look out for him, okay? Don’t let him get in any trouble.”

Kimberly stares at him and blinks once, slowly. “Yeah, okay,” she says at last. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“Thanks.”

Leon turns back to the table and lets his attention drift while he thinks back over everything that’s happened since last night. Was it really less than twelve hours ago that he stood on the makeshift stage and unveiled his new single? When he thought being praised by an adoring audience was enough? Was it only a day ago that Diego was still speaking to him, that he took that for granted and thought all he needed to do was treat the boy like a good-time buddy?

Outside, the bell starts ringing to gather everyone up and officially end the party. Leon heads for the restroom one last time, getting his baggie of coke out of his pocket. He opens it, taps a line onto his hand mirror. Rolls a dollar bill. Stands there, holding it. Listens to the bell.

He turns on the faucet and washes the mirror, drops everything in the trash can, and walks away.


	30. Interlude: Lottery of Death

As an author, I chose to tell in this story my own idea of how Leon’s morning after the party might have played out, including going home to New York City. In actual fact, the last thing he said to anyone was asking Kimberly to look after Diego, and then the bell began to toll.

That terrible, terrible bell.

It was our signal to end roleplay, sit down, and be quiet. We were in a liminal space, still in touch with our characters but operating as players.

Two of the game organizers entered the room dressed in black suits and hats – the Bureaucrats of Death. Their job: to conduct the lottery that would determine which characters would die before the next year’s 4th of July party.

My experience as a player was complicated by the fact that our game did not have enough players to fill every role, and as a result some of the organizers were pulling double duty by also playing characters. The player of Rain was among them, which was the reason for the “early bus” conceit; he had to go wipe off makeup and put on a suit and get ready to destroy us.

In the first act, the Bureaucrats of Death were sad for the characters, for the world they represented who did not know the devastation AIDS was about to visit upon them. They handed out blank tickets and pens, and told us each to write our character’s name on at least one, and up to five, tickets, representing how risky we felt their behavior had been based on what we know today about the mechanisms by which AIDS is spread.

I still remember the sense of pride with which I scrawled “Leon” on five tickets. Leon lived hard, had lots of sex, did lots of drugs – the things someone like him was “supposed” to do at the time. I was defiant as I dropped my tickets into the hat. That was Leon before. He was on the edge of so many things about to happen: a comeback career, reconciliation with his son, finding love for the first time in his life. I didn’t know it yet, but Sorrento had decided to run for office and wanted Leon to join him in cleaning up their lives and making something out of their futures.

Those were the things in my mind as Pepper’s player – another organizer – began drawing names and the Bureaucrats told us to stand if ours was called. A bright future, my beautiful plans.

I don’t remember anymore who was called first. Only that Leon was second.

I remember the entire room gasping. I remember that tears were already flowing down my cheeks by the time I got to my feet. I remember avoiding the gaze of my friend Brand across the table, knowing I might not be able to keep standing if I peeked at his face. I stared at the Bureaucrats, the bringers of death, the only people so unfamiliar in that room that I might be able to look at them without completely falling apart.

When all the names were drawn, they told us to follow them and be silent.

We left the main cabin and walked down a grassy slope, stopping just before we would round a corner placing the funeral tent in view. I had helped erect that tent less than 24 hours earlier. It felt like a lifetime.

Another organizer awaited us, dressed in a long black skirt and velvet jacket, a fascinator pinned to their head so a black net veil covered their face. The Angel of Death. The Bureaucrats went on to the tent, leaving us in the Angel’s detached care. “Stand in a single file line,” they told us. “Do not look at each other. Do not speak.”

Somehow I had ended up at the front of the line. Not even the presence of another human figure ahead of me could bring me comfort, offer me an anchor to seize while I drowned in grief. The Angel stared impassively ahead. I shook in sobbing, silent misery.

Finally one Bureaucrat returned. “Come with me. Stay in line.”

Five coffins lay under the tent. Five signs lay inside them.

“Walk through the tent. If you see your name in a coffin, lie down inside it.”

Leon’s was the first name I saw. I’d known it would be.

It becomes redundant to say I was crying. I’m not sure I actually  _stopped_  crying from the moment I heard my name called until half an hour after I later re-emerged from that coffin. But if it was possible, I began to cry harder. I laid down.

“If your name was not in a coffin, you will have a brush with death in the coming year. You may go back up the hill now.”

I could see nothing but plywood and canvas and one incongruously blue strip of beautiful morning sky. I hadn’t even looked at who else had gotten into coffins. I didn’t know who was returning to life.

“We will now place two shrouds. If you are covered with a shroud, you will die of AIDS this year. If not, you have been infected with the virus but you do not know it yet.”

The Bureaucrats unfolded a shroud. I could see only enough to know that when it was open, they walked it away from me.

An endless time passed as I awaited the final shroud, and I found myself wondering: do I want to live? Or does Leon’s death become a symbol? Do I serve to catapult the stories of those I touched in my brief time here?

The Bureaucrats unfolded the second shroud, and it was with a feeling of inevitability that I watched them walk it over my coffin and drape me in stifling black.

“The rest of you may leave your coffins and rejoin your loved ones.”

Later, I would have the experience of being one of those who waited at the top of the hill, scanning the crowd with a sinking feeling as I looked for a loved one who had not returned. I can only imagine what it must have been like for the players of Diego, Sorrento, Enrique, and Skye to stand outside the cabin, to see others return and to look with desperate hope for me and for Simon, and to find neither.

There were a few more preparations for the Bureaucrats to make. They folded the shroud down from my face, and for a single disoriented moment I thought they had turned on a fog machine, as if we were entering Heaven, or Limbo. Then the fog began to clear and I realized it was my glasses – Leon’s glasses – clouded over with my own hot breath and tears. They placed a sign on my body, and started the music.

Then it was time for the mourners to arrive.

I can’t remember anymore the order in which they came. I kept my eyes open as they did, needing to see, needing to hear, needing to know that my death would matter. I remember Mr. T – they were back in character by then – kneeling by my coffin and saying, “You’ll always be the king to me.” He placed something with me that I couldn’t see; later I would learn it had been his heaviest and gaudiest gold ring.

I remember Diego laying a branch of leaves across me, and myself thinking, “He brought something big. That means something.” I remember dozens of others with small flowers and sad faces, holding each other as they realized how fragile we all truly were. How death waited at the end of every day, and could not be denied.

I remember Sorrento falling to his knees beside me, crying as he said, “He’s the only one who ever really saw me.” Those words, so closely echoing Leon’s feelings for Rain, shook me to my core.

And I remember my own anguish as I hoped and waited and prayed for the one face I needed most, the one voice I needed to hear speak his love and his sorrow, the one that would never come. I needed Rain. And because the player was an organizer, Rain couldn’t be there.

I still didn’t know, then, who lay in the other coffin. It wasn’t until the characters gathered outside the tent and the funeral began that I heard, “We are gathered here today in memory of Simon,” and it hit me that Rain, Enrique, Diego, Sorrento, and Skye were in the midst of having their entire world torn apart.

In  _Just a Little Lovin’_ , every day begins and ends by playing the eponymous song while the players stand frozen in place. When it ended we were supposed to break character, and I made it as far as sitting up before I came undone. I covered my face with both hands and cried so hard the rest of the world went silent.

I think it was Mo, though it might have been Rachel, and could just as easily have been both, who got their hands under my arms and helped me first to stand up, then to get one foot, then the other, out of my coffin. “You always die first,” Mo said with a little laugh, referring to when she had run  _I Say a Little Prayer_  in 2014, first planting within me the desire to play the full version of the game, and I as Daniel (aka Lady Verona) had been the first to go.

Mo and Rachel and Brand, the friends I had played ISaLP with that first time, held me for long minutes while sobs wrenched their way out of me. Finally Mo looked at my tear-ravaged face. “Who do you need?”

“Diego,” I choked out. “Sorrento.” I didn’t know their player names well enough yet to ask for them. “Rain.”

Rain’s player was there, but it wasn’t the same. The Bureaucrat looked too different, and the organizer had too many other duties that needed attention. “Man, Rain is going to be seriously fucked up after this,” I told him, then let him run off. The others hugged and held me while I tried to staunch my endless flow of tears.

“Melissa. Get me Melissa.”

My best friend, who played ISaLP both times that I’ve run it since my own first time in 2014 (once at my house, and once at a small local gaming event), who had come to JaLL because I talked her into it, wrapped me in her arms and got me back up the hill. Our characters, moving in entirely different social spheres, hadn’t even crossed paths the night before, and slowly I managed to tell her the shortest version I could manage of what the hell had happened to me. I cried a few more times. I sat down and tried to write about it in an email to my boyfriend, but I didn’t know how to even begin to explain why my heart was still lying in shreds in a plywood box.

But time marched on, and things had to be done. The game continued. I picked a new character, Francis, whom I would inhabit for the remaining two days. In a twist of dramatic irony, Simon’s player chose Artie, Francis’s best friend, and we two became lovers by the end. And I also know that he, like me, formed an attachment to his flawed first character that death would only serve to deepen.

I did my best with Francis, but Leon planted himself in my heart and set down roots that will never let go. Perhaps the funniest part is that I didn’t actually like him very much at the beginning; it was only when I began to understand his loneliness that I really let him in.

And that’s why I’m writing this entire work: to let him finish telling me his own story. To remember what happened, and learn what didn’t. To let him know how important he remains to me. Because disco may have died, but for me, Leon never will.


	31. Time to Grow Up

“We need to have a talk, man.” Sorrento is waiting with a pair of beer bottles at their usual spot at the bar. He opens Leon’s and slides it across the countertop to him as he sits down.

It’s been a week since they got back from Saratoga, and the two have barely spoken since. Sorrento brought Diego to Leon’s penthouse the night they got back to collect a few things, Sorrento throwing clothes in a laundry basket while the boy stood by the door with his head down, shuffling his feet and nodding occasionally when Sorrento held up an item. Leon had retreated to the balcony to give them space, staring at the lights on the Empire State Building and hoping against hope that Diego might change his mind. Sorrento opened the door to tell him they were leaving and to be at the club Friday night, and until tonight that was the last Leon heard from him.

But this is their Friday night ritual before the club opens as long as they’re on speaking terms – not always a given when their egos really clash – and Leon is relieved as hell to see they currently are. He takes the bottle Sorrento gives him, and both are quiet until they’ve each finished their beer. “Okay,” he says once the first empties have hit the countertop. “Let me have it, I guess.”

Sorrento folds both arms on the bar and leans into them. “Look, it’s not that I want to lecture you. But…” He sighs deeply and furrows his brows. “I just think it’s time we took a good look at ourselves. At what we’re doing here. I had… kind of a revelation when I went to that Tantra thing.”

Leon makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a rueful sigh. “You and me both.”

“Yeah? What was yours about?”

“Being seen.” It’s an insufficient explanation, but he isn’t sure how to say it better.

Sorrento frowns and nods. “Yeah. Whether anyone has ever really seen you.”

It’s not  _quite_  the same, but Leon decides not to go into it. “Yeah. So… have they? Seen you, I mean?”

“Yeah, man… you. I think you’re the closest there is.”

That brings Leon up short. “You… really?”

“Yep.” Sorrento pushes himself up from the bar and gets a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He lights one for himself, then offers them to Leon, who takes one as well. “And it made me think about what other people see when they look at me, and man, I don’t know if I like it that much. We’re still fucking around doing blow and partying every weekend and fucking teenagers. Do we want to still be doing that in our sixties?”

Leon exhales a stream of smoke. “I think I’m done fucking teenagers.”

“Good. Me too. So I don’t need to get on your case about the Rain thing.”

Well, shit.  _That_  was unexpected. An icy finger touches Leon’s heart. “Hang on, what  _about_  Rain?”

Sorrento looks at him like he’s asked whether water is wet. “He’s a fucking teenager? Or near enough.” Leon’s protest must show on his face, because Sorrento’s tone gets harsher. “He’s too young for you, and  _you_  – ” He leans on the bar again to jab a finger emphatically into Leon’s chest. ” – need to stop stealing the kids  _your_  kid wants.”

Rain? Since when? “Okay, I know the thing with that kid he brought home that one time – ”

“Karl.”

” – yeah, Karl. That was… real shitty. And I know it, and I’m  _sorry_ , if he would let me  _tell_ him that. But I didn’t  _steal_  Rain, we… he…” He trails off, falling into uncomfortable thoughts. Has he ever really talked with his own kid about what  _he_  wants? Or has he just made his own assumptions and dragged the kid around to  _his_  parties,  _his_  scenes,  _his_ clubs, pushed him into the lifestyle  _he_  thought Diego must want? All while running around doing whatever the fuck he pleased.

“You’re making yourself sexual competition for your own kid,” Sorrento says with an accusatory edge. “Eli. Enrique. Yes, Rain. Everywhere he looked last weekend, there you were fucking someone he’d had his eye on.”

“… shit.”

He can’t even say for certain that it wasn’t, on some level, intentional. What kind of shitty fucking father is jealous of his own kid?

“Yeah. And then there’s Urban Renaissance. You  _know_  Rain and Simon are in love with each other, and all you’re doing is getting between them, and you’re gonna feel like shit when you’re why the band breaks up. They’ve got talent, you know it, I know it. I want them here, on our stage, and all this shit’s gonna hit the proverbial fan the first time I get you and Rain and Simon all under the same roof again.” He opens another pair of bottles. “So end it, man. Whatever the fuck it is. Let’s grow up, let’s act our ages, let’s get this place cleaned up and figure out where we’re going.”

Leon is silent for a very long time. He nurses his second beer and smokes the cigarette down to the filter. Finally he nods. “Yeah. Okay.” He finishes the last swallow. “How’s my kid doing?”

“He’s doing okay. Looking for an apartment. Kim and Kimberly are  _both_  helping him find more work.” He lights a fresh cigarette with the end of the first one. “I’m damn sorry now I fucked him the times I did, and I swear to God I’m never touching him again. But I’ll still say out loud, he’s one gorgeous fucking kid and no wonder he’s making himself a modeling career. He doesn’t even have to fucking try.”

The two open one more round, and then it’s time to go get dressed. To put on the shades and the skinny pants, and touch the unfamiliar nakedness of his upper lip for the thousandth time this week. To do a line, because even if they’re cleaning the place up it’s surely not starting yet, not when in a couple hours the Friday night party will be in full swing. And after that conversation he’s got the shakes something fierce.

He hasn’t seen Rain since Saratoga either, and up until now he’s hoped his lover would be here tonight. Now he thinks over what Sorrento has said, and how it’s undoubtedly all true. He knows what he’ll have to say, what he’ll have to do. Maybe it  _is_  love, but he can get over it, and Rain can too. There’s more out there for both of them.

But that doesn’t make the lump in his throat any easier to swallow.


	32. You Don't Decide

He sticks to his hits tonight. There will be time for introducing the new sound soon enough. Maybe Sorrento can do a big unveiling event. And at the end of the day, Studio 54  _is_  a disco. That’s what people are here for: to listen and dance and drink and snort and fuck to disco.

Try as he might to pay attention to his audience, his eyes are drawn like a magnet to Rain when he steps onto the dance floor. Tonight he’s wearing a Mozart-inspired wig with precise white curls marching down the sides of his head, and a black button-up shirt with a fall of white lace at the collar and a deep V-neck revealing his slender chest. It suddenly occurs to Leon that he doesn’t know what Rain looks like without a wig.

Fortunately he has his own stage outfit on, including another pair of colored aviator glasses, and Rain can’t see the moments he spends unable to tear his gaze away. Dear god, the boy is beautiful. Even in his incongruous outfit, his dance moves let him fit in with the crowd, and his form-fitting pants attract no shortage of attention. But his smiles and glances are all for Leon.

He retreats backstage at the end of his set. He’ll go dance soon, he just needs… a few minutes. Sitting at the long mirrored countertop – a relic from when the club was a proper theater – he mops sweat from his body, starts to tap out another line of coke, then thinks better of it. He probably needs a clear head right now, and there will be time for a bump after Rain leaves.

“Hey Leon.”

Oh,  _fuck_. Of course Rain knows his way backstage, his band played here once before. He leans against the door frame, an inviting pose made seemingly without even thinking.

“You were so great tonight.”

Leon smirks. “What happened to the Rain who thinks disco is dead?”

“He’s busy getting proven wrong.” He crosses the room, Leon stands to meet him, and their arms come around each other.

Leon can’t help himself. He returns Rain’s kiss with passion and hunger, feels himself harden. Tension he hadn’t even realized had built up within him drains away, consumed by his lover’s mouth. Rain’s hands slide into his hair, still sweaty from the stage. He moans in spite of himself.

Then he takes Rain’s hands and moves them, gently but firmly, to the boy’s sides. “Rain… we can’t do this.”

Rain looks puzzled, but still seductive. “Here? We, we – we could move to the balcony if, if – if that’s what you want.” He looks both apprehensive and intrigued by the idea.

God, he wants to. Here  _or_  on the balcony. Instead he sighs and releases Rain’s hands. “No… I mean, we can’t do  _this_. Not here, not anywhere.”

Rain’s eyebrows come together. “What do you mean?”

Leon tries to remember Sorrento’s words. “I’m too old for you, and… there’s Diego. And Simon. They  _both_  want you. I… I keep getting in everyone’s way, and Sorrento is right. I need to grow up.” Loneliness creeps back through him, but it’s a familiar feeling, and he reminds himself: he has Sorrento. And if he makes things right with Diego, maybe there’s still a chance there too. “We had something at the party, but… I have to go back to the real world, and so do you.”

Rain gives him a long, searching look, then finally says, “No.”

“… Sorry?”

“No,” he says again, firmer this time. “You, you – you don’t get to just, just – just decide this.” He takes one of Leon’s hands again. “I decide – decide who  _I_  want to be with. You don’t decide that. And, and – and I want to be with, with – with you.”

Their fingers lace together, and Leon couldn’t say for certain who makes the motion.

“Rain…”

“I spent all night getting, getting your attention at Saratoga. You think I’m just, just – just giving that up because, because Sorrento got inside your head?”

They crash into the countertop. The lace on Rain’s collar rips as Leon yanks at the shirt, unable to get anything off Rain fast enough, his own hands tangling with Rain’s as he tears clothing from Leon. Leon turns him roughly around and shoves him into a bent-over position, fumbling with belt and zipper and lube and finally pushing into Rain with a fervor that makes them both cry out.

Afterward, they dress and make their way hand-in-hand to a den where couches line the walls and snuggle into one together. “Sorry about your collar.”

Rain twists his mouth. “Yeah, I do kinda like this shirt.”

“We’ll find you another.”

“So you can rip that one off me too?”

Leon pulls Rain closer to him. “I promise I’ll be gentle.”

Rain tilts his head up for a lingering kiss. “Don’t be.”


	33. Underground

Urban Renaissance rehearses in the basement of a low-rent apartment building in West Harlem, a claustrophobic space lit by low-wattage bare bulbs, with an ancient coal chute in one wall and a crumbling, disused brick chimney dominating the center. They’ve spread cheap rugs over floor in the corner where they set up, and hung posters on the cement walls. God knows where they got it, but there’s also a legless couch plopped on the floor far enough away to sit and listen, its cushions sagging into worn-out springs, covered with several clean sheets that at least mask the dusty, musty smell wafting from it.

Leon’s skin crawls when he enters, but he decides he’ll put up with a messy underground space to listen to Rain play. He takes a seat gingerly on one arm of the sofa. It creaks alarmingly, but holds out. “Are you… are you sure this is gonna be okay?”

Rain is elbow-deep in the sound board, hooking up connections, but he pauses to look up at Leon. “It’s gonna be fine. I talked to Simon after we got back, and he’s, he’s – he’s still kinda pissed, but, but – but mostly at me, y’know? Not, not – not really at you.” He flashes Leon a wry grin. “Though he made a point of telling me again that – that if, if – if you hurt me, he will, and I quote, ‘Knock his fucking teeth out.’ So it’s, it’s – it’s a good thing I haven’t – haven’t told him about you trying – trying to break things off with me.”

“Hey, I – ”

“I’m kidding. I like you with – with your teeth still in your mouth.”

Leon slowly slides into the corner of the couch, making certain to keep a layer of sheets under himself and trying to suppress his grimace.

“And,” Rain continues, “Simon is kind of – kind of seeing someone since, since – since the party.”

“Oh yeah? Anyone I know?”

“Well, yeah. Enrique.”

“Oh, awesome. Enrique’s fun.” As soon as the words are out of his mouth he wonders how Rain feels about him talking about other lovers.

But if Rain is bothered, he doesn’t show even a flicker of it when he looks up again. “I know this isn’t – isn’t the kind of place you’re used to.” Either Leon’s face gives everything away, or the boy is damned intuitive. Probably some of each. “We’re, we’re – we’re working on something – something better. But this, this – this is cheap and, and – and at least it’s dry.” He makes another connection, and something electronic buzzes to life. He gets to his feet and picks up his guitar, begins fussing with the dials on the front. “Y’know, I’ve been at your apartment.” Now he seems to be avoiding Leon’s eyes.

“Really? I think I would remember that.”

“It was, was – was about four in the morning, and – and I found Diego, strung out and, and – and wandering around half-naked.”

Leon has a guilty flashback to Diego spending the night on the bathroom floor and flushes. “Ah.” It’s a low, near-voiceless sound.

“I got him home,” Rain says. No question, he  _is_  avoiding looking up. “He, he – he called me a savior. Wanted – wanted me to stay. But, but – but he looked so young, and – and I didn’t really – really feel good about it.”

“He  _is_  young. He’s seventeen.”

Now Rain  _does_  looks up, his expression both surprised and alarmed. “ _Seventeen?_  You know he, he – he was telling everyone at Saratoga he was  _nineteen_.”

“What? Fuck. Really?”

“Yep.”

“Jesus.” Leon runs both hands through his hair. “I may not have been around when he was born, but I sure as hell remember how old I was when I tried to see if it would work with a woman. I was seventeen, now I’m thirty-four, and that makes  _him_  seventeen. What the hell was he thinking?” He pauses a moment and puts his hand over his eyes. “What the hell was  _I_  thinking?”

Finished with his guitar, Rain sets it on a stand and comes over to sit next to Leon. “Hey, you didn’t – didn’t make him lie about, about – about his age.”

“No, but I dragged him into all of this in the first place. I took him in when he left home, gave him his first taste of coke, introduced him all around town. Rain, you gotta know… I’m kind of a mess.”

“Yeah. I know. I didn’t – didn’t know it was your apartment then, but, but – but part of why I didn’t stay was – was it looked like a drug den. Like – like my parents’ house always – always looked.” He wrings one hand in the other. “I got Skye and myself out of there when – when they couldn’t really – really take care of us.”

“You care about him.”

“He’s, he’s – he’s selfish as fuck and, and – and a goddamn pain in the ass. But… but he’s my brother.”

Leon wants to say more, but just then there’s a bang from the top of the stairs, and footsteps come clomping down. Simon is in a variation on the only clothing Leon has seen him in: a black vest covered with buttons and zippers, black pants, black boots, and a scowl that deepens when he sees Leon and Rain sitting close on the couch. “Nice.”

Ignoring the sarcasm, Rain looks at his watch and sighs. “Fucking Skye. He’ll probably – probably be an hour late, if he even – even remembers to show.”

“We can go without him.” Simon takes a place at the keyboard and plays a few bars, stretching his fingers out. “Is Leon staying?”

“I wanted – wanted him to, to – to get to listen to some more of, of – of our stuff. We’re going to, to – to collaborate on – on something.”

“Not for Urban Renaissance.” It isn’t a question.

“No, it’ll be our, our – our own – own side project.” Rain gets up and takes his guitar.

“Fine,” says Simon. “Whatever. Let’s play.”


	34. Fire and Fuck You

“Hey, you’ve been cleaning.” Sorrento looks around approvingly.

They’re at Leon’s place to talk about an unveiling party for his new album. Sorrento brought some sketches for posters and seems astounded to find the coffee table clear of the drug paraphernalia that usually occupies the surface.

“Yeah. I wanted to get the place ready for…”

“Another famous Leon party? Usually you  _add_  drugs for those, not take them away.”

“No…” He takes a deep breath then looks at Sorrento defiantly. “For Rain. So he can be comfortable here.”

Sorrento pauses in the middle of laying out sketches. “I thought you were ending that shit.”

“Listen,” Leon says with a forceful edge, and he feels a little of his former fire and “fuck you” rear up, things he hasn’t really felt since the green drink ceremony. It’s slightly exhilarating to have them again. “I respect you and I think you’re right about some stuff, but you don’t get to tell me how to run my whole life. Rain and I aren’t the first couple with an age difference. Look at Abner and Eli, or that Ike kid from Saratoga – he had to have been half his boyfriend’s age.”

A familiar, stubborn set appears in Sorrento’s jaw. “So you’re just gonna keep things fucked up with Diego and Simon?”

“I’ve seen Simon. And I know Rain’s talked to him.” Leon crosses his arms. “He’s getting over it. And he’s dating Enrique.”

Sorrento is quiet for a long moment, glaring at him. “Yeah, I knew about that.”

Leon’s eyebrows shoot up. “You knew and you still wanted to chew me out? What, did you need to rub your whole ‘I’ve had a revelation’ moment in my face? Shit, you think I didn’t have my own? How do you think I  _ended up_  with Rain at the end of the night?”

“Alright… I’ll admit, I had sorta been wondering about that.” Sorrento sighs and a little of the irritation leaves his face. “So this is  _your_  revelation? Start dating a kid?”

“You know he’s a lot more grown up than most of the kids his age,” Leon fires back. “And the revelation was that it’s time I tried to actually make something really work with someone.  _Stop_  fucking around and… and keeping everyone shut out. And that someone turned out to be Rain.”

Another long moment passes. “You’re really trying to make this work?”

“Yeah. I am.” They stare each other down and Leon half-expects Sorrento to storm out in a temper.

“Shit,” he finally says. “Alright. I didn’t know it was… you were trying to get serious.” He sits down on the couch. “You got a beer?”

“Diego’s not gonna like this,” Sorrento says when Leon returns with a pair of bottles and joins him on the couch. “But I’ll try and tell him this one’s… different.” He takes a long drink. “Are you really gonna stop sleeping around?”

“I… I don’t know. We didn’t really talk about it. He says it’s not a relationship, but he says we’re together, so… yeah, I don’t know.”

“Do you  _want_  to stop sleeping around?”

“I don’t even know  _that_  yet! Part of me says yes. And part of me wonders if that green shit kinda wears off eventually, and what then? I don’t want to… to lose love when I’ve only just found it.”

“Wait, love?”

Leon looks him in the eye. “Yes.”

“Shit.” It is, apparently, a day for short statements and long pauses. Finally Sorrento turns to the coffee table. “Alright then. Let’s talk glitter.”


	35. Clouds Illusion

“Welcome, everyone, to Studio 54!”

Sorrento has completely outdone himself tonight. Billowing clouds cover every inch of the floor, spewed from dozens of industrial fog machines throughout the club. The cocktail waitresses are wearing translucent raincoats over lacy lingerie, and the busboys are clad in thongs, rain boots, and nothing else. Under the balconies, thousands of skinny silver strands flutter in the breeze from nearby fans, and everything, from clouds to rain to the glorious silver curtains on the stage, is lit with tiny colored spotlights, filling the room with ever-shifting hues as the gels rotate.

“It’s like being inside a rain cloud,” someone says.

“A disco rain cloud,” adds a second voice, and Leon turns toward them.

He’s out on the floor to mix and mingle before the show, feeling fabulous in form-fitting black pants and a looser white silk shirt, tucked into the pants and open all the way down to reveal his ever-present rhinestone medallion. Somewhere Sorrento found him a pair of shoes with little lights in their mile-high clear platforms, and down among the swirling clouds their glow diffuses so that everywhere he goes he walks within his own personal halo.

“Hey. Ruben, right?”

Tonight the man is wearing a lavender suit much like the one from the 4th of July party: wide shoulder pads and wide lapels, straight-legged pants and a shirt a few shades lighter than the suit with a tie a few shades darker. He takes a confident step toward Leon and offers his hand. His shake is strong, assertive. “That’s right. Ruben McHallow, Transatlantic Technologies.”

“And I’m still Ike,” says the younger man next to him. “Ruben’s partner and graphic designer.” He’s also looking superfly in a black-and-white slim-fitting striped jacket over black shirt and white pants, and a fedora with a white band and feather. “This place looks amazing. Who did the design for the posters?” He’s referring to the life-sized banners just inside the club’s entrance, featuring Leon in a variety of poses: showing off his ass; arms spread in a rainstorm; and holding an umbrella, looking seductively at the camera while silhouettes of buff men crawl at his feet and spread their hands up his body.

“Sorrento, actually. He has some unexpected talents. It’s great to see you both here, though I wouldn’t have guessed this was your kind of scene.”

Ike laughs. “Not usually, but I wanted to get out on the town, and Ruben likes being seen with me.” There’s something different now about the look that passes between them: a flirtatious fondness, and Leon realizes it’s the first time he’s heard Ike speak more than four words in a row.

“Yes I do,” Ruben says, and shifts to put his arm around Ike, who melts a little into the older man’s side. “And I’m certainly looking forward to your show. This will be all from your new album?”

“Well,” Leon says with a grin. “I’ll probably throw in a few older hits at the end. Half the crowd still loves them. But yes, the focus is on the new sound. HI-NRG.”

“I can’t wait to hear it,” Ike says. “Should we get some drinks, love?”

Leon nods to them, and they head toward the bar. There’s a new bartender there tonight, a cute kid Sorrento just hired last week. Trent, Troy, Trevor, Tristan… something like that. He’ll make sure to say hello later.

He looks around the room, and recognizes quite a few people from Saratoga. That’s gratifying; either he wasn’t really as washed-up as the whispers there suggested, or his comeback sound truly is making him relevant again. Mr. T is front and center in the crowd, flanked by his lawyer Charlotte as well as Skye, pressed close to T with one arm wrapped around his arm and the other laid possessively on his bicep.

“Hey T! Good to see you here!” Leon shakes the record producer’s free hand.

“I wouldn’t have missed it! Glitz and glamour, and your new song – just amazing. I almost wish you didn’t already have your own producer.” He grins invitingly. “You know, if you’re ever looking to make a change…”

“We’ll see.” It’s an easy noncommittal response and they both know it. “I heard something at Saratoga about you picking up Urban Renaissance.”

“We’re in talks right now, in fact. I think they’ll be a great fit for one of our smaller labels; get them some exposure in the more avant garde crowd before we throw them in the big kids’ pool.”

“Mr. T knows how to take care of us,” Skye says, the double entendre glaringly obvious. “I love what you’ve done with the place. It feels rather like home.”

“Oh yeah – Skye!”

“With Rain on the side.” He smirks. “How  _is_  my brother?”

“We’re doing well.” God help him, it’s been a couple months and he still feels butterflies fill his stomach when he says “we.”

“It’s nice to have someone keeping him busy.”

It’s a compliment, but somehow it’s still more about Skye than Rain and Leon.  _Nothing if not self-absorbed_ , Leon recalls Rain saying. “Glad I can be of help. Enjoy the party.”

He moves to the two women clustered nearby with Charlotte. “Hey Charlotte, welcome. Thanks for coming.”

She gives him a pleasant smile – not entirely enthusiastic, but at least better than the disdainfully amused glance he’d gotten from her at Saratoga. “Of course. Sorrento made a point of inviting me.” She half-turns to the other two women. “Have you met my friends Katherine and Santiago?”

“I’m sure I saw you at Saratoga,” he says, “but we never had the pleasure.”

Katherine is bolder about grabbing his hand. She’s a tall, handsome woman in a tasteful navy blue dress, hair in a sophisticated braid. Her only concession to the club atmosphere seems to be a pair of long multi-stranded diamond earrings, dripping nearly to her padded shoulders. “Katherine Stockton. Editor for the New York Times City section. I recall the paper did a piece on you a year or so ago… a bit in the Arts section, wasn’t it? On you and your son?”

“Our touching reunion piece, yes. One of a few.” Normally an out gay man wouldn’t rate a mention in the Times, but he’d still had enough celebrity status to pull a few strings. He turns to the third woman, Santiago. “Leon. But I’m sure you knew that.” He winks. Never hurts to flirt with a fan.

She gives him a cool, unimpressed smile, ignoring the hand he extends. “I’m here for Katherine. And Charlotte.”

“Well, hopefully you can enjoy yourself anyway.” He grabs a passing cocktail waitress. “Honey, get Katherine and Santiago here whatever they’d like, on me.”

“Sure. Ladies, what’ll it be?”

Katherine sweeps an appreciative look from head to toe over the woman in her skimpy outfit. “What would you recommend?”

A tiny smirk quirks the girl’s lips. “You might enjoy a Slippery Nipple.”

“Sounds delicious.” She plucks a five-dollar bill from her clutch and lays it on the tray, and Leon catches the nearly-imperceptible brush of her fingertips over the waitress’s, concealed below the tray. Santiago shakes her head, but her smile is shining, indulgent, and pleased.

Leon leaves them to their flirting. Showtime is approaching, and there’s one guest he both hopes and dreads to see.

He goes to look for Diego.


	36. A Beginning

He doesn’t even make it ten paces before a familiar figure steps into his path. “Leon,” Chain says with a seductive pout. “How come I never see you anymore?”

Tonight he has literal chains on, thick metal links wrapped around his neck and ribcage and connected to a round ring nestled between his beautifully defined pecs. Aside from the chains his chest is bare, and while his skin-tight leather pants couldn’t possibly be in danger of falling down, he’s nonetheless wearing a belt covered in three rows of sharply-pointed metal studs. A matching collar is fastened around his neck.

He steps in and wraps his arms around Leon’s neck before he even has a chance to react. Leon’s hands move reflexively to Chain’s waist, and next thing he knows the boy’s lips are on his.

Shit. Somehow he still hasn’t discussed the subject of monogamy with Rain, and until this moment it simply hasn’t come up. He finds himself returning the kiss; it lacks the passion of his embraces with Rain, but there’s a pleasant comfort and familiarity in it. Leon feels himself begin to respond.

“I’ve been super busy,” he says when the kiss breaks off. He steps back slightly – not quite pulling away, just getting a little space to breathe. “Recording an album takes a hell of a lot of work.”

He’s also had his head together with Rain much of that time, engrossed in their side project. His own attempts at lyrics are still almost entirely hopeless, but between them they’re slowly beginning to find a sound that meshes.

“Then you definitely need some time to relax. Take me out after this. We’ll have some fun.” Chain’s fingers feather over the back of Leon’s neck.

It’s tempting. Incredibly tempting.

“I’ll call you.” He puts the tip of his finger inside the ring lying flat against Chain’s chest, stroking the skin in a small circular caress. He’ll talk to Rain and find out for certain where things stand. If it comes to it, he can always call Chain, take him out for a drink, then tell him he’s gone on the straight and narrow.

Well. Narrow, at any rate.

He releases Chain and notices, for the first time, that he’s with a few other men from the Cruisers Club. Bret, Andrew, and of course Steven. And… huh. Howard. He looks slightly awkward in leather chaps and a jacket that are still stiff and new, so much so that Leon can hear them creak when he moves. It’s still a better look than the turquoise shorts he’d been wearing the last time they met. Leon catches his eye, and Howard immediately flushes and looks at the floor. “Hey, uh… Leon.”

It seems overly cruel to pay the kid more attention than he’s  _already_  uncomfortable with. “Nice to see you here, Howard. Bret, Andrew. Steven.” They’re all in varying amounts of leather and denim and vests and chains and jackets, tight and revealing. The exception is Bret, who has on acid-washed denim shorts that cover next-to-nothing over bright pink tights. His one nod to Cruisers style is a black fishnet shirt. “Looks like you’re having a whole Cruisers outing.”

“Something like that,” Steven says. He actually smiles, and moves to shake Leon’s hand, a single firm stroke. “Plus my nephew Bret. Chain really wanted to come see you, and Diane talked me into coming and, well. Here we are.” He hooks his thumbs into his belt loops and rocks back on his heels. “You were pretty great back at Saratoga. Better than I expected.”

Leon sighs inwardly at the backhanded compliment, but keeps a smile on his face. “Thanks. I’m pretty excited about the new album. HI-NRG is where dance music is going. Chain, you’re gonna put some of those dance moves on the floor tonight, right?”

“You know it.” He rolls his hips, and Leon becomes painfully aware of exactly how tight his own pants are.

“Good. I’ll look for you.” He starts to move through the crowd again, then abruptly turns back. “By the way. Have any of you happened to see Diego tonight?”

“I saw him earlier,” Bret says. He’s been looking around at the room and the lights and the crowd with an expression of wide-eyed amazement, a wide and unwavering grin stretched across his face, but he pulls his attention to Leon with an effort. “Over at the bar with Claire and Kimberly. I think he might have been flirting with the bartender. Want me to get him for you?”

Leon chews his lip, considering. “No, I’ll make my way around. Thanks guys.”

As he leaves he notices Andrew settle his hand on the back of Bret’s neck, and the anguished look Howard gives them both.  _Ah_.

He hesitates for several minutes, standing in view of the bar but unsure if he should approach. More guests pass by and he smiles and chats and shakes hands, welcomes them to the club and thanks them for coming even as his stomach knots up and his palms sweat. The words are automatic, the smiles formed with the unthinking ease born of years of practice. Finally he makes the decision: he heads to the bar.

“Leon, hey.” It’s the new bartender, whose name he still can’t remember. He has dark hair in loose curls around his neck, and it brings to mind his own former honey-colored mane. “What’s your drink?”

“Harvey Wallbanger.” He winks at the kid. “But not right now. I’m looking for Diego. Have you seen him?”

The bartender nods at a nearby table, making his thick bangs fall across his eyes, then tosses his head to settle them back into place. “Sure I can’t get you a drink?” He waggles the bottle of vodka enticingly.

Actually, maybe a drink wouldn’t be a bad idea. “Make it two.” He takes the drinks when they’re finished and heads toward the table the young bartender had indicated. It occurs to him a beat too late that he still forgot to ask the kid for his name.

He hasn’t seen Diego in person since the night after the 4th of July party, though with the boy getting more modeling work it would have been nearly impossible not to have  _seen_  him. Most recently he’s appeared in a larger-than-life advertisement for Drakkar Noir right in Times Square, gazing soulfully out of the frame with his arm crossing his bare chest to lay his hand on the side of his neck, his dark lashes and square-jawed profile and softly-open lips inviting women and men alike to imagine everything the picture doesn’t reveal.

Now he’s at a table with Claire, smiling and laughing at something she’s said. An unpleasant shock goes through Leon as he watches Diego’s hand land on Claire’s, their fingers caressing with easy familiarity.

Claire sees him first. “What the fuck do  _you_  want?”

Indignation flares up. “You know you’re at  _my_  album unveiling party, right?”

Diego, who has risen from his chair, looks over at Claire. “It’s okay. Give us a minute?”

Her eyes bore into Leon, but after a few moments she gets to her feet. “I’ll go powder my nose,” she says, picking up a sparkling clutch from the table, “but I’m coming back in  _five minutes_.” The last two words are spoken while glaring daggers at Leon.

“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass while you’re in there.”

She flips him off as she flounces away.

Diego shuffles his feet. “Um. Hi.”

“Hi. I’m… glad you came.”

“Sorrento wanted me to.”

“… oh.” He offers Diego one of the drinks. “Harvey Wallbanger?”

Diego takes the glass hesitantly. “You know I’m actually seventeen, right?”

“Yes. But I also know what you’ve been telling everyone.” They both drink. “Can I sit?”

Diego shrugs. He retakes his own seat, and Leon edges into the neighboring chair. The boy dips his fingers into his shirt pocket and comes up with a pack of smokes. Still not making eye contact, he offers the pack to Leon before taking one for himself. They each take a long deep puff, blowing the smoke up to the ceiling. Leon slides an ashtray across the table and flicks his cigarette over it.

“So, um. How are you doing?”

His son rubs the back of his neck, a motion disturbingly reminiscent of the image of him currently adorning the heart of the city. “Okay. I found an apartment. Getting work.”

“Yeah. I saw your billboard. You look…” He takes another drink to steady himself. “You look stunning. Like your mother.”

For the first time in the conversation, Diego looks up at him. “I look like you.”

Leon shakes his head. “You look better.” They’re quiet for another minute.

“I’m sort of seeing Claire.” Diego’s gaze goes back to the table.

“I kinda figured.”

“You’re not upset?” He glances up once more.

Leon toys with his glass, spinning it in the condensation that’s collected on the tabletop. “I figure it’s not really my place to be. If she makes you happy… then be happy. You’re… you’re still my son, whatever… whoever you want to be with. Plus,” he adds with a self-deprecating grimace, “there’s zero chance of me stealing this one. Accidentally or otherwise.”

Their eyes meet, and the ghost of a smile touches Diego’s mouth. “I wanted to be here, too.”

Leon’s answering smile is slow, hesitant, hopeful. “I’m glad you did.” He picks up his drink and tilts it toward Diego. His heart seems to stand still. At long last, his son lifts his own glass and touches the rim to Leon’s. They both drink again, Leon leaning his head back to finish his off.

“I should go,” he says. “I’ve probably kept the band waiting long enough already. And I don’t particularly want to wait for your girlfriend to come back and rip me  _another_  new asshole.”

This finally gets a chuckle from Diego. “She can get kind of stubborn. I’ll ask her to let up on you a little.” He also finishes his drink. “See you up there?”

“Yeah.” Leon stands up. “See you on the dance floor.”

It’s not much. But it’s a beginning.


	37. Closeted

Of course, there’s one more person to see before he takes the stage.

He finds Rain with Simon at a table of their own. Thing have smoothed out a bit between them in the last few months, no doubt helped along by Simon’s growing attachment to Enrique. The two have become a frequent fixture at the club, Enrique even coaxing the taciturn keyboard player onto the dance floor. No doubt he’d be at the table right now, if his bartending duties weren’t needed for the party. It’s also helped that, even with his side project with Leon, Rain has maintained his devotion to Urban Renaissance, and they’ve played an increasing number of gigs at tiny clubs and underground raves.

Leon takes one of the empty chairs by the table and straddles it, leaning on his elbows on the back of the chair. “We’re getting started soon. I hope you’re ready to dance.” He reaches over to take Rain’s hand, resting on the tabletop.

Rain moves his hand away, disguising the motion as picking up his drink. Uncertainty flickers over Leon – does he just not want to rub a show of affection under Simon’s nose, now that they’re in a good place? Or did he see Leon and Chain? The talk he’s planning to have might now be a great deal more uncomfortable than he’d anticipated.

“I’ll be out there.” He swallows the remainder of his drink. “You need any help backstage?” Catching Leon’s eye, he cants his head toward the back of the club.

“I’m not going to say no.”

They both stand and leave the table. Simon doesn’t glare at them, but he does look out toward the rest of the crowd, simply avoiding watching them go.

“I’m sorry about that,” Rain says, catching Leon’s hand as soon as they step through the side door. “It’s just… we’re so, so – so public out there right now. The crowd out there is, is huge.”

“… and?”

“And – and there’s just, just a lot of potential fans for, for – for Urban Renaissance. And I’ve been thinking, we, we should make sure we keep our, our image accessible.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“Meaning, meaning I want to, to – to appeal to everyone, you know? The gay kids, the, the straight kids. If I’m, I’m – if I’m open, we, we – we cut off all these, these potential fans.”

What? Where the hell is this coming from all of a sudden? “You aren’t out?” Leon’s voice rises, incredulous.

“No, not, not – not publicly. You know, at, at – at gay parties, and, and clubs where we won’t really be seen, it’s, it’s fine. But out, out – out there, it’s, it’s different. I just don’t want that to, to – to hold back our success. Once we make it, once, once we have a hit album. Then… then I’ll come out.”

“So, what?” Leon stops and faces Rain. He pulls his hand out of Rain’s and crosses his arms. “You think you can’t make it if you’re out? Has my career somehow escaped your notice? I’ve been openly gay since I was eighteen.”

Rain’s expression is earnest. “I know, and, and – and that was great for you! You’re, you know, you’re the king of disco. But we’re, we’re – we’re trying to reach a, a different crowd, right? It’s not like disco. And, and – and once we, we – you know, once we make it. Then I promise, I’ll come out.”

Leon frowns. “I don’t know about this. You’re hiding your identity – you’re hiding  _us_  – to sell records? I thought it was about art, and poetry, and authenticity.” He realizes he’s getting angry. “This is the  _opposite_  of authenticity. This sounds pretty much like selling out.” Without even giving Rain a chance to respond, he turns and stalks into the dressing room, where makeup and hair products are strewn across the counter, and disco outfits hang from a rack. He begins stripping off his shirt.

“It’s  _not_  selling out.” Rain trails him into the room. “I’m, I’m going to, to reach those straight kids’  _inner_  gay kid. They see me, they, they – they get into our music, right? Then, then we tell them hey, guess what, you, you – you’re into this guy who’s actually gay.”

Suddenly something makes sense: they never go out to well-known scenes. Places where Leon might be seen, recognized, photographed. They stick to the small venues where Urban Renaissance plays and Leon goes to hear them, nights at Leon’s penthouse, dinners at little dimly-lit restaurants in the Village where straight people never go. It never bothered him until now, but he’s never even been to Rain’s place.

“You don’t want to be seen with me.” He shrugs into a dark-blue silk shirt adorned with sparkling vertical lines of glitter, undoes his pants to tuck it in.

“I  _do_ ,” Rain protests. “Just not, not – not  _yet_. Once we get the album out. Once we make it.” He takes two steps toward Leon, holding out an entreating hand. “I promise,” he repeats.

Leon sits down at the countertop and picks up the eyeliner. “Great. And until then?”

“We’re, we’re – we’re making this work, aren’t we? We can, can still be together. Just, just – just closeted. Just for now.”

 _Closeted_. Just the word brings cold fury bubbling to his surface. Him, Leon. The artist who fought all his life to  _be_  a famous openly-gay man. “I’m not going in the closet. Not for you. Not for anyone.” He pauses in the middle of applying his eyeliner and gives Rain a level look, his mouth set in a hard line. “You should probably head back out. Go be seen with your ‘ _straight_ ‘ friend. I have to finish getting ready.”

He turns back to the mirror, and doesn’t watch Rain leave.


	38. Unveiling

The show is everything he and Sorrento hoped for. The crowd responds with screaming enthusiasm to “It’s Raining Men,” and the follow-up songs – “Funkin’ Tonight,” “Move to the Beat,” “Radio Lovin’,” and more – are just as well-received.

He spots yet more people from Saratoga. Joani sways in a backless white cotton halter dress that barely covers her breasts, thickly-embroidered flowers down the front and around the hem giving the skirt just enough weight to swirl around her legs every time she turns. Diane is out on the floor as well, sparkling under the lights in clinging gold sequins, her long auburn curls unbound and wild and flying. Steven dances with her, a bit awkward but grinning, doing his best to keep up with Diane’s spins and twirls. Abner, whom he surely would have made time to talk to had he seen him earlier, is near the edge of the floor, doing the Bus Stop in a line with Eli, Jerrod, and Nick.

Reginald, the dancer who appeared alongside Chain for The Queen of New York’s performance, nearly has a bubble of his own as the people around him stop to watch with open-faced appreciation and awe. The strap of his golden thong is buried between his ass cheeks, and aside from what it covers in the front he is utterly naked. He randomly grabs people from the crowd and pulls them in to dance with him, placing their hands on his bare chest and rolling his body, drawing them along. Hips meet and grind and thrust, but he releases each of them after only a minute or two, turning around to find another partner to tease.

Santiago is throwing down a Funky Chicken that belies everything about her standoffish attitude, wide pant hems and open sleeves swinging as she gyrates nearly to the floor. Katherine’s moves are more reserved, but she’s smiling and laughing, glowing when Santiago grabs her by the waist and coaxes her into bumping hips. There are more, hundreds more, ones he’s greeted, ones he hasn’t, all dancing, dancing, dancing. Everyone dancing.

He signals the band, and the horns and electronic piano start up. “You got me rollin’ like a wheel on the road, turnin’ round and round, nowhere to go.” The snares come in with his vocals.

“I’ve got to find out if you’re feelin’ it too, it’s hard to tell, so here’s what I do.” A shake of his hips raises a scream from the audience. “And every time I want more, I’ll take you out on the floor.”

“I was made for dancin’! All-all-all all night long.” He holds the mike out to the crowd, and they sing it back to him. “ _I was made for dancin’! All-all-all all night long._ ”

He remembers Rain catching his eye across the floor at Saratoga as this song played.  _I spent all night getting your attention._

“The days and nights are movin’ by me and you, you’re such a crazy love, you tear me in two.”

 _You do, my crazy love. You tear me in two_. Where  _is_  Rain? His eyes sweep the dance floor even as he sings and flirts with the crowd.

“I spend my time moving to dreams and a phase, it’s a crazy love, you can see it in my face.”

His smile falters as he realizes: Rain is probably gone. He quickly turns it into a sultry pout, and at that moment notices Chain, who is looking back at him.

They lock eyes, and smile.

***

“Go, get in,” he says to Chain when the car arrives in the alley behind the club. Chain reluctantly peels his body away from Leon’s, grabbing him by the hand and pulling him off the wall. They clamber into the back, and no sooner does the door close than Chain crawls atop him, straddling his legs and pressing his hard cock into Leon’s stomach, tugging his tucked-in shirt from his pants. Leon squeezes Chain’s ass, and the boy leans over to kiss him, tongue exploring deep into his mouth.

The driver is Leon’s usual, and simply rolls up the privacy barrier without a word.

Chain slides down from Leon’s lap, kneeling on the floor of the car. “Pull your pants down.” His mouth, when it closes around Leon’s cock, is hot and wet and eager, and Leon sinks his hands into Chain’s hair, resisting the urge to thrust too hard. The boy slides his lips slowly from base to tip and back again, his tongue cupping him, smooth and slick.

“Sir.” The driver’s voice comes through the small speaker in the back, and Leon looks up with a start. How are they already at his building? He hurriedly pulls his pants back up, wincing as he struggles to zip them over his erection.

Chain half-falls from the car; they’re both moderately drunk. “SHHHH,” he stage-whispers, then dissolves in a fit of giggling. Leon wobbles on his platforms as he hauls Chain to his feet, and slaps the side of the car to signal the driver to get lost. They stumble into the lobby and then the elevator, the private one he opens with a keycard, the one that only goes to the penthouse. The moment the door closes Chain shoves him into the corner and presses himself lengthwise against Leon, hands bracing on the walls as they both grind and thrust and moan.

The doors open directly into Leon’s apartment, a foyer leading into the living room with its conversation pit and skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. Now it’s Leon’s turn to lead Chain – he grabs him by the ring over his chest where the crossed chains meet and walks backwards into the huge open space, grinning seductively, Chain prowling in his grasp and keeping his eyes locked with his. Leon doesn’t even wait to get to the wraparound sofa; he pushes the boy down on the top step of the sunken floor and fumbles his pants open with eager fingers, stripping off the skintight leather until his lover wears nothing but his harness of chains.

“Leon… Leon…” Chain groans as Leon takes the boy’s cock into his mouth, going hard and fast, rubbing himself with his free hand. Chain’s body arches, his breath growing ragged. Leon moves his hand from his own cock to Chain’s balls, and hot cum fills his mouth, splashing the back of his throat. He waits for it to finish, swallows, and moves back up to kiss Chain again, letting the boy taste himself on Leon’s tongue.

Chain rises up on his hands and lets his head fall back, still breathing hard. “I’ve missed you.” Sitting the rest of the way up, he puts his hands on Leon’s chest and pushes him to stand. “Go sit on the couch. And take your pants off.”

Leon’s erection has faded, but it quickly comes back to life under Chain’s ministrations of lips and tongue. The boy reaches up to run his hands over Leon’s body, curling his hands into his chest hair and tugging gently. He pushes Leon’s legs further apart, grabs his hips to pull them toward himself. Leon spreads his arms over the sofa cushions and leans back.

The blowjob is deliciously slow, starting at the head of his cock and moving down infinitesimally, one slightly longer lick at a time. “Oh,” Leon moans, closing his eyes. “Ohhhh.”

Chain puts two fingers in his mouth, presses the tips to Leon’s asshole. Sinks them inside. Curls them in a “come-hither” gesture.

“Oh… oh… oh, holy  _shit!_ ”

He comes, hard and thorough, feeling as though he turns nearly inside-out with the force of it. Chain lets Leon’s cum paint his face, licks his lips when the flood finally ends. He flops onto the sofa next to Leon, and the two are silent for a long time.

“I should get you a towel,” Leon says at length.

“That would be nice.”

Leon rises with an effort and offers his hand to Chain. He leads him to the master bathroom and hands him a towel, then moves through the door into the bedroom while the boy washes down.

He doesn’t expect the word that comes out of him when Chain emerges, face freshly scrubbed. “Stay.” It’s soft, imploring. Nearly a whisper. He realizes for the first time that it’s become difficult to sleep without the warmth of a body in his bed.

Rain’s body.

Chain nods and begins unfastening the harness he’s still wearing. Leon removes his shirt and drops it in the basket the girl will take for dry-cleaning later this week. He’s facing away, and doesn’t see Chain step up behind him.

“What’s this?” Fingers gently stroke his back, just under the left shoulder blade. Leon moves to the mirrored closet, turning his back to it and craning his head to see. A purplish-red spot has bloomed on his skin.

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you should get it looked at.”

“Maybe.” He goes to the bed and draws the blankets down. Stretches out on his side and holds a hand out to Chain. He snuggles his body up to Chain’s back, wraps his arm around his waist, and soon they are asleep.

He forgets all about the spot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made allowances within the game for characters to use real-world songs / lyrics as their own. All songs are used without permission.
> 
> “I Was Made for Dancin'” © Michael Lloyd, 1978.


	39. Fuckity Fucking Fuck

The buzz of the intercom wakes him. Leon looks blearily at his bedside clock: 9 am. Who the fuck would be ringing the bell at this hour?

“Wait here.” He kisses Chain softly on the back of the neck.

Wrapping himself in a velour robe, he moves to the hall outside the bedroom and thumbs the button on the speaker. “Who the fuck is this?”

There’s a long pause, then: “It’s Rain.”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity fucking fuck.

He pokes his head back into the bedroom. “Stay here,” he says, a little more firmly this time. Chain waves a sleepy hand and pulls the covers up over his head. Leon closes the door behind him, and presses the button that will allow Rain into his elevator.

Discarded clothing is strewn around the conversation pit; he gathers it up as fast as possible and tosses it into the nearest bathroom. He’s closing the door just as the elevator dings, and seconds later Rain rounds the corner.

Out of costume he’s less exotic, but the sight of him still makes Leon’s heart skip a beat. Without a wig his hair is the same golden-brown as his brother’s, short and rumpled with natural curls. He stops just inside the room and looks uncertainly at Leon. “You disappeared last night.”

“I didn’t think you were still there.”

“Of course I was.” He takes a tentative step toward Leon, his eyes confused. “I wouldn’t leave you.”

Leon matches Rain’s step, adds a second of his own. “I looked for you on the dance floor.”

“I was up on a balcony. Dancing,” he adds quickly. “I wasn’t sure you’d… you’d want to see me during the show.” Another step.

“I wanted to. I was singing ‘I Was Made for Dancin” to you.”

One more step. “I hoped you were.”

Leon closes the distance in three strides and takes Rain’s face in his hands, Rain’s own hands going to his chest. Their kiss is full of question and answer, apology and acceptance, and Rain melts into him.

“I’m sorry for what I said last night,” Leon says when it ends.

“I get it. You were angry. Probably right to be.”

“We’re going to have to talk about this.”

“Then let’s start now.” Rain begins moving toward the conversation pit.

Guilt flushes through Leon. He can’t stand the thought of lying to the boy he loves. But this isn’t how he pictured this conversation taking place. “I… I have to tell you something.”

Rain pauses halfway down the steps. “What is it?”

Leon opens his mouth, and at that moment hears the bedroom door. “Oh, hell,” he has time to say, and then Chain walks into the room. Stark naked. He doesn’t even pause as he heads toward the kitchen. “Hey Rain.”

Rain sits down on the sofa. “Hi Chain.” He looks over at Leon and pats the cushion next to him.

Okay. What the hell is happening right now?

“Do you have any milk?” This from Chain, who is now peering into the refrigerator.

“It’s in the door if I do.”

“Oh, hey.” Chain walks into the living room holding the carton and takes a long swallow. “So, where are my pants?”

“Powder room,” Leon says faintly, indicating it with a nod.

“Cool.” He disappears back to the bedroom with them tossed over one shoulder, still holding the carton of milk.

“I’m going to assume,” Rain says after a pause, “that that was what you had to tell me.”

Leon can’t find his voice. He nods miserably.

Rain tilts his head. “I’m not sure why though.”

“Um…” He blinks several times at Rain. “What?”

“Why would you have to tell me you had someone over?”

“Because… I… we…” Words are impossible; everything about this situation is beyond him right now. “We never… talked about it.”

Rain’s expression is one of genuine puzzlement. “Yes we did.”

“What? When?”

“At the very beginning. I told you we weren’t in a relationship.”

The words come back to Leon. At the time he’d thought they simply meant that Rain wasn’t interested in labels. “We… but… I thought…” He walks down into the conversation pit and gingerly takes the seat next to Rain.

“Wait. Have you  _not_  been with anyone else since then?”

“No!”

An amused smile spreads slowly over Rain’s face. “Leon, I just assumed. I’m with you, but I don’t want to tie you down.” He raises one eyebrow. “Though now I’m, I’m – I’m a little curious why you brought someone else home if, if – if you thought we, we  _hadn’t_ discussed it.”

Leon drops his head into his hands, elbows on his knees. “I was drunk. Angry. High on adrenaline. I thought you had left.” A beat. “I’m sorry.”

For a while Rain doesn’t say anything, and Leon doesn’t look at him. He’s fucked this up, like he fucks everything up. It was just a matter of time.

Hands take his and gently pull them from his face. “There’s nothing to apologize for. We’re together. That’s, that’s – that’s what I care about.” Blue eyes look into green.

Leon rises abruptly to his knees, right there on the sofa. His arms go around Rain, and he pulls him tight to his chest. Rain’s own arms are crushed between them, but he doesn’t protest. Leon slides a hand up to cup the back of his lover’s neck and lowers his cheek to Rain’s head. “I love you.”

“And I you.” He pulls his head away and tilts it up to Leon. “We still have to talk about… about the other thing.”

“I know.” Leon kisses his forehead. “I’m still not exactly happy about it. But the idea of leaving you is worse.”

“Then we’ll figure it out.”

Leon settles into the sofa and pulls Rain to him again. They hold each other, not even looking up as Chain slips quietly away.


	40. Here I Am Again

They release the album in October as  _Here I Am Again_. Sales go through the roof, and suddenly Leon is in demand everywhere.

Entertainment Tonight praises the record as “the rebirth of a star,” “trendsetting,” and “eminently danceable.” David Letterman invites him to Late Night, where he shows off a few dance moves and talks about the “creative process” of updating his sound.

“We’ll you’ve certainly hit on something,” Letterman says. “The new album is completely taking over the airwaves. So tell me: is there more to come after this?”

“There is, David.” He flashes his famous smile for the camera. “I’m collaborating on a project with a few other artists.” Rain has asked him not to single him out too much. “I’m really interested in some of the New Romantic sound coming from across the pond, and of course putting our own spin on it.”

“Tell me a little more about that.”

“Think Roxy Music, Culture Club, Duran Duran.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “You’re working with Duran Duran? That sounds like a  _big_ departure from your past sound.”

Leon tosses his head back and laughs. “No… they haven’t responded yet, I’m afraid.” He winks, and the host chuckles. “But yes, it is a bit of a departure, and I’m looking to work with a variety of up-and-coming artists. For example, have you heard of Urban Renaissance?”

“No, not yet,” Letterman says. “But it sounds like I will before too long.”

“Oh, count on it. We’re creating something totally new, a sound nobody has dreamed of yet.”

Letterman leans conspiratorially into his forearm on the desk. “You know, I have to ask: what’s it like being a famously out gay celebrity?”

Leon gives him his most flirtatious grin and matches the host’s forward cant. “Well, David,” he says, “do you want me to show you some time?”

***

He and Rain find a compromise. Publicly he’s seen with other men, and Rain goes to social events alongside him so long as Leon has another date. It’s exhilarating in a way: furtive glances across a crowded room; fingers secretly brushing when they join a group photo; putting a hand on the small of Rain’s back when he introduces him – “one of the singers I’m collaborating with, you should talk” – and letting the touch linger an extra moment.

A former dancer from American Bandstand comes out as gay, claiming he was fired when Dick Clark found out. Leon has his publicist contact him, and soon they are seen at nightclubs and hotspots all over town. He takes Chain out as well, and occasionally picks up men from Studio 54, maintaining his public image as a tomcat.

Rain explains the arrangement to Sorrento, who tells Diego, who one night leaves a hesitant message with his father’s answering service: “I was thinking maybe, we could… if you’re free… maybe some time we could have dinner.”

***

“I am completely fucking exhausted.” Leon collapses on the sofa and rolls onto his back without bothering to turn on the lights.

Rain comes in from the kitchen and switches on a table lamp. Now that he has his own elevator card, it’s no surprise for him to already be there by the time Leon gets home. “Yeah, I can see where all that fame must be tiring.”

Leon has one arm slung over his face, shielding his eyes from the light. “It is, actually. I taped four interviews today, I’ve been in and out of cars and traffic, I have Sorrento bugging me to get over to the club so we can talk about some new plan he has, I’m trying to find a time I can see my son now that he’s offered an olive branch, and on top of all  _that_  I have to make sure enough people see me out with Tommy and Chain and whoever else that they don’t get suspicious when they see me talking to  _you_.” He shifts his arm and scrubs his face with both hands. “And I haven’t had time to eat since this morning, so maybe spare me the sarcasm.”

There’s the sound of movement, and then gentle fingers comb through his hair. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m… a little jealous.”

He keeps his eyes closed, enjoying the sensation. “That came out a little harsh,” he admits. “I know how hard you’re working too.” He moves his hand to stroke Rain’s arm, then tugs him over to kneel next to the sofa. “Sometimes it feels like we hardly see each other anymore.”

When he opens his eyes he sees that Rain is in his stage costume. “Did you have a show tonight?”

“We played Gramercy.”

Leon sits up abruptly. “Wait, Gramercy? Gramercy  _Theatre?_ ”

Rain nods, and a beaming smile breaks over his face.

Leon throws his arms around Rain’s waist and hauls him atop himself on the sofa. “Why didn’t you _tell_  me?”

“I knew you were too busy to make it. It was tonight or nothing.”

“I would have…” Leon brushes Rain’s hair from his face where it’s become discombobulated. “I… fuck. No, I couldn’t have.”

Rain settles down, laying his cheek on Leon’s collarbone, one hand curled under his own chin and the other toying with Leon’s hair.

“Hang on. You played Gramercy Theatre and you’re still jealous?”

“Of your  _time_. I want us… I want us to get back to our project.” He opens the hand tucked under his chin and lays it on Leon’s chest, over his heart. “I’m starting to miss you. Fame has made you so, so… so busy.”

Before he can answer, Leon’s stomach growls impressively. “Dammit. I’m starving, and there’s nothing here.”

“Actually,” Rain says, “I ordered lo mein. It’s in the fridge.” He yelps as Leon sits up, tumbling Rain to the floor. “Hey!”

“There’s food and you didn’t  _tell me?_ ” He’s already halfway to the kitchen.

Rain follows after him, reaches into a cabinet while Leon opens the fridge. “You want to put that in a bowl?”

Leon turns around with the cardboard carton in his hand. “Fuck that. Grab some forks.” He grins and waggles his eyebrows at Rain. “You ever eat noodles in bed?”


	41. The Space Between

“I didn’t know you played piano.”

“It’s been a really long time.” Leon fumbles over the keys, finding chords his fingers have long-since forgotten. “My mother played, and she taught me.”

Rain joins him on the bench. They’re at Urban Renaissance’s underground rehearsal space, but on their own time. “I don’t know much about your family.”

“I don’t know much about yours either. Other than they did drugs.” He starts a simple tune, pulled from the foggy depths of memory, then starts adding a jazz improvisation over the bass line, faltering at first but strengthening as muscle memory returns.

“Hey,” Rain says, bumping him with his shoulder. “You’re not half-bad, old man.”

“I might remind you that you are fucking this old man, so what does that make you?”

“Gold digger. I’m into you for your money and your fame.”

Leon breaks off playing to punch Rain playfully in the bicep. “My mother was a jazz singer,” he says, returning to the keys. “My father split before I was ever born. Probably didn’t want the responsibility of a kid,” he adds, and grimaces at the irony.

“It’s different. You didn’t know.”

“I might have, if I wasn’t a selfish asshole who fucked a girl once and then ran off.”

Rain shrugs. “You can find plenty of regrets if you look hard enough.” He gets up from the bench and starts tuning up his guitar. “My parents weren’t  _exactly_  druggies, but it was always… always kinda chaotic. We, we – we started off in one trailer and, and – and then just moved around to, to other ones, and they were – they were gone a lot of the time, and there, there were drugs around a lot. I mean…” He quirks an eyebrow at Leon. “They named us Skye and Rain. I don’t have to tell you they were, were – were hippies.”

“Yeeeah.” Leon turns on the bench to face him. “So who got you into music?”

“They did, actually. Dad was a guitar player, just… just not, not – not a composer. So he had a band and played, y’know, colleges and stuff, but that, that only lasts so long. And then he had a folk act, and Mom sang with him, but….” He shrugs. “And they had all these musician friends too, and I just…” He picks out a few chords. “I picked stuff up. I could figure out just, just about anything someone put in my hands.”

Leon nods. “My step-dad was a drummer, but they actually were pretty good at it and they had me up on the stage ever since I was a little kid. They got me into jazz, and it was New Orleans, so everything is blues, soul, that kind of stuff. And if you speed that up… it’s not a big step from there to disco. So you got Skye into it too?”

“Yeah, kinda. He was always a good singer. But, but – but he just lets me take, take care of everything. Just like when we were kids.” He plucks at the strings again, studying the guitar harder than necessary.

Knowing how quickly Rain can become melancholy, Leon turns back to the keyboard. “So. We’ll get some session musicians for the horns, but we can do it without them for now.” He presses a few keys, and a four-four rhythm with a snare on the backbeat starts up. “We’ll jazz this up too, obviously.”

“Turn it off for a second. I want to bring it in with just the guitar.”

“Sure.”

They work through the intro, fourteen measures of guitar feature. Leon records a repeating bass line to underlay it, then brings in synth strings. He sings the horn bit, then he and Rain come in on melody and harmony together.

“No way, no why.” More sung horns, counterpointing the melody. “No care, no cry.” It repeats through the remaining intro lyrics: “No way, no sign. So fair, so fine.”

There’s a synth feature, then a guitar feature in the middle. More horns.

“The way I see it, this relationship ain’t right. The space between us, listen here, listen. Better close it up tonight.”

“Are you sure you’re okay with these lyrics?” Leon says when they break. “They  _are_ about a relationship. Which we’re not in.”

Incredibly, the hint of a blush touches Rain’s face. “If this helps Urban Renaissance get a push, then, then – well, then I can come out. So, so, so it – it helps set, set that up.”

“I’m actually teasing you,” Leon says, “but good to know our project is about launching your other career.” He winks to take the sting out of the words.

Rain smiles and rolls his eyes. “Move to the next one?”

“Let’s run this again. We have plenty of time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made allowances within the game for characters to use real-world songs / lyrics as their own. All songs are used without permission.
> 
> “The Space Between” © Roxy Music 1982.


	42. The Fall

In November he collapses on the stage.

***

He’s had dinner a few times with his son. Diego and Claire seem to have ended their thing, and now he’s seeing an NYU student named Jacques, someone he met through Eli. Leon schools his face to stillness when he mentions it, even though a part of him is relieved to know his son is still at least partially gay. Diego is thinking about school himself, encouraged by Jacques, and by Sorrento.

“So what are you thinking of studying?”

“I don’t really know yet. But I guess I can’t model forever.” He looks down at his plate. “Enrique says he can help me make some good money while I’m there, too.”

Leon takes a deep breath. “I know my advice hasn’t always been… fatherly.” Diego grins wryly. “But I wouldn’t. I really wouldn’t. Once you start down that road, it’s a tough one to get off of again.”

“That’s a little… pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?”

“Call it the voice of regretful experience.”

They share a wistful smile, and Diego nods. Leon knows it it isn’t actually agreement, but lets it go.

***

Sorrento has grand plans.

“City council?” Leon tone is dubious.

“Yes! I don’t think it’s insane. First…” He takes a deep breath and sighs, his lips pursed so it becomes a long apprehensive exhalation. “First I bite the bullet and come out to my parents. They still think I’m dating Charlotte.”

“Ouch.”

“But then, man. You’ve got all this celebrity clout right now as an openly gay man. We’re gonna use that. If we rally a base…”

“You really think we could pull it off?”

“I think we gotta try. Even if it doesn’t work the first time… It’s groundwork, y’know? Let’s get out there and start making a difference. Let’s give it a shot.”

Leon thinks about it for a few minutes. “Okay,” he says finally. “Let’s give it a fucking shot.”

They clink bottles and drink to it, long and deep.

***

It’s been a rough few days. He’s had some kind of stomach bug, the kind where anything he eats seems to run right through him, so mostly he hasn’t.  _It’ll pass in a couple more days_ , he thinks.

The show is a mix now, the old alongside the new. They’re drawing bigger crowds, revitalizing the fan base. Sorrento’s intentions of cleaning up the drugs are going… less well; officially they’re banned, but he can’t search every pocket or watch every space. But it’s improving.

Which is why Leon stays in the back alley and takes a furtive look around before taking a hit. He’s just so tired lately. So busy. This will be the last time, he tells himself. Just get through this show, then he’ll find the time to recharge. He’ll stay clean for Rain.

He says it every time.

The audience still goes nuts for his new hit. They’re mostly gay men, after all. Who among them  _wouldn’t_  love a song about gorgeous men falling from the sky?

“It’s raining men! Hallelujah! It’s raining men, amen! Tall, blonde, dark and lean, rough and tough and strong and mean.”

Rain is out there. He’s not at every performance anymore, but he is tonight. They’ll go back to Leon’s place after this. Between their schedules there’s hardly been time for sex lately, and his thoughts keep wandering into anticipation, imagining the taste of his lover’s skin.

“It’s raining men! Hallelujah! It’s…”

The walls suddenly recede, and his body flushes icy cold. His own voice comes to him as a distant muffled sound, someone else singing as he sinks underwater. He tries to shake his head and stumbles as ringing fills his ears.

“… raining…”

The mike falls from nerveless fingers. Feedback squeals, and the music stutters to a ragged halt as the players all cut off at different times. One stands up. “Leon?”

“… Rain…”

His vision fills with stars, then blackness like the closing of an iris.

He never feels himself hit the floor.


	43. Diego: My Fucking Father

“He’s my  _fucking father!_  What the  _fuck do you mean_  you can’t let me in?!?”

It takes over two hours of arguing with bored admins who walk away for minutes at a time; who give him cold impassive looks and tell him to “keep your voice down, there are sick people here”; who have him fill out endless paperwork and hand over identification that they don’t bother to look at before telling him he’ll have to wait outside; who pass him off to other admins who make him start everything over. In the end he and Sorrento do the only thing they can think of: they call Charlotte, who calls the hospital in the middle of the night to threaten every form of legal action in the book if they don’t let “ _Leonard Fucking Fontaine_ ‘s god-given biological son!” into his hospital room.

He leaves Sorrento and Rain both pacing in the waiting room while he stomps furiously down the hall. “I’ll update you as soon as I can,” he promises before he goes.

His father is in an isolated room, several twists and turns away from the emergency ward. The mouth of the final halfway is guarded by a pair of swinging doors, their edges wrapped in rubber gaskets, and signs emblazoned with the word “BIOHAZARD” attached to each.

The door to his father’s room is closed. There’s a bright orange sign on it. “Warning: GRID.” Cold dread settles into the pit of his stomach with the weight of a boulder.

Leon looks unconscious when he enters, but his eyes flutter open when Diego touches his arm. “Hey.” The word is slightly muffled by a paper mask over his face.

“Hey,” Diego says back. He drags a stool over from the sink in the corner and perches on it. “How… um. How do you feel?”

It’s hard to tell for certain, but he thinks his father tries to smile. “Never better. Can’t you tell?” He glances down at himself, taking in the IV in his arm and his hands, which have been inserted into plastic gloves and attached to the bed rails with Velcro strips. “Clearly I’m getting the celebrity treatment.” His eyebrows fall. “Nobody will talk to me. What happened?”

“You…” He swallows. “You fainted on stage.”

His father’s eyes register confusion. “But…”

There are too many words to say; they’re a cacophony inside his head. “There’s… there’s a sign on the door. It says… they… they’re saying you have GRID.” He feels the corners of his mouth twitch down and swallows again, hard. “AIDS.”

Leon’s eyes widen over his mask, flooding with fear. Diego takes his plastic-covered hand and bows his head, and father and son commune in screaming, deafening silence.


	44. When I'm Gone

“ _I’m fine_. Stop fussing.”

Sorrento ignores him and continues tucking a blanket over and around Leon’s lap. He sits down around the curve of the wrapped sofa when he’s done, leaving room next to Leon for Rain, who is currently still standing at the window with his arms crossed, vibrating slightly as one heel bounces up and down.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” he says to the city below.

“Tell you what?” Leon says. “That some funky purple shit showed up on my skin?” The lesion on his back has been joined by a few on his feet and more dotting his upper arms and lower shins. “They looked like bruises. They don’t even hurt.”

Rain spins around from the window, his face dark. “Bruises fucking, fucking – fucking  _everywhere?_  That didn’t seem even a little, little bit strange?”

Leon shrugs helplessly. “What do you want me to say?”

They’d all four spent the night – or, more accurately, the obscenely early morning and into the afternoon – sleeping at his place, Diego and Sorrento in spare bedrooms, and Rain wrapped around Leon and refusing to let go.

Diego comes in from the kitchen with a steaming bowl and sets it on the coffee table. “Eat that.” It appears to be chicken soup with the noodles strained out. Leon makes a face. “Now.” He walks back to the kitchen.

The hospital had filled him with IV fluids and nutrients, given him an antibiotic for the intestinal infection that’s made him sick the last few days, and then kicked him out with orders not to come back. The doctor who had finally entered his room and deigned to speak to him had worn a floor-to-neck paper sheath, hat and mask and rubber gloves, and disposable booties over his shoes.

“We don’t treat gays with AIDS here,” he’d said curtly. “Wear the mask and the gloves when you leave. You will receive a bill in the mail.” He’d laid the prescription slip on the sink counter, and left without another word.

Rain finally leaves the window and joins Leon on the sofa, picking up the bowl of soup. “Please.” His bright blue eyes are full of worry. “You need to eat.”

Leon accepts the bowl with a sigh and takes up the spoon. It’s actually not bad, but it burns when it hits the back of his throat. He eats it slowly, grimacing with each spoonful.

“Okay,” Sorrento says. “We’re going to find a place that will treat you. Last night they just took you to Presbyterian because it was close. Bunch of prejudiced fuckwads.”

“Treat  _what?_  They’re saying they don’t even know what causes it or what to do.”

“They can at least, at least – at least treat the, the – the infections,” Rain puts in. “What, what kind of, of – of hospital doesn’t help someone who’s, who’s  _sick?_ ”

“They’re afraid.” Diego comes in again with a plate of sandwiches. Sorrento and Rain take one each, but while Sorrento tears into his with ravenous bites, Rain merely picks at the crust. “You should have seen the doctor last night,” Diego continues, perching on the coffee table itself. “He couldn’t get rid of us fast enough.”

“Where did you even get food?” Leon says.

“I ran to the bodega, and stop trying to change the subject.”

Leon clangs the spoon into the bowl. “I’m a little annoyed with everyone talking over and around me right now, like  _I_  don’t get any fucking say in any of this.”

The room falls silent for awhile. Eventually Rain slips his hand into Leon’s. “I’m scared too,” he says. “I, I – I don’t know what to do. You’re… I…” He presses his forehead to Leon’s shoulder. “I love you.”

Leon sets the bowl back on the coffee table and wraps one arm around Rain, pulling him close. “I love you too. But I just want things to be… normal. As normal as they can be. I’m not…”

He trails off, unable to finish the sentence they’re all thinking.

_I’m not dead yet._

“We’re going to play our show,” he continues. “Our music’s getting heard. We’re not throwing away everything we’ve put into it.” He hugs his love tighter. “And we’ll get some studio time. Lay it all down. So when…”

Another awkward silence.  _So when I’m gone_ …

“We’re recording it,” he says in a tone that brooks no argument. “The second these antibiotics clear me up, I’ll book the time.”

Rain quietly nods, and nobody says anything else. There’s nothing else to say.


	45. Sorrento: Let It Be Enough

They flush the rest of Leon’s coke and his quaaludes, though Rain tells him to keep his weed. “I’ve heard it helps with pain.”

Sorrento calls every hospital in the area and is refused again, and again, and again.

So he begins visiting them instead. He stands in lobbies and speaks in a tone just below a shout, making sure everyone who comes and goes hears that the hospital turns away sick people. He stays until security personnel come to throw him out, then he yells some more from the sidewalk.

After relentless weeks, he finally gets one sliver of hope. A girl, no more than a candy-striper, runs after him, catches him in the parking lot.

“I can’t help you,” she says, then leans in close, pitching her voice to a whisper. “But there’s some doctors. They’re in the closet. They’re afraid they’ll lose their jobs. But I have…” She looks around nervously, grabs him by the arm, and pulls him further away from the hospital entrance. “I have a brother. He knows some people.”

Sorrento fumbles for paper, comes up empty. “Give me his number. I’ll just… I’ll just remember it.” He swears it to himself.

But she shakes her head vehemently. “I have to give him yours. He’ll call you from a payphone. Here.” She gets a pen from her apron and offers her hand, and Sorrento writes Leon’s phone number in her palm.

“Please.” He closes her hand around the number, holds her fist in both of his. “Please, tell him to call. It’s for…” He takes a shuddering breath and decides to take the risk. “It’s for Leon.”

For a second the name doesn’t register, then her eyes widen infinitesimally. “I’ll do what I can.”

 _Please God_ , he prays.  _Let that be enough_.


	46. A Bottomless Ocean

They get another keyboard, and another guitar. Another soundboard, stereo headphones. Sorrento finds some “extra” microphones at Studio 54 and brings them over with a couple of stands, and they hire a contractor to hurriedly install soundproofing throughout Leon’s entirely-unused office.

In other words, instead of Leon going to the recording studio, they bring the recording studio to him.

“I don’t know why we didn’t just do this months ago,” he says as he and Rain sit down for their first session. “All this time we could have been playing in comfort instead of that hole in the ground you call a rehearsal space.”

Neither acknowledges the reality that the last time they went, Leon could barely make it back up the stairs. Rain had half-carried him draped over his shoulders, and Leon had pretended not to see the unshed tears that shone in the boy’s eyes while he hailed a cab.

“I like it there,” Rain says. He catches Leon’s eye with a secretive smile, and Leon suddenly recalls the time they made love on that horrifying couch, dust kicking up so thick in the air that they’d been forced to flee before they could finish, coughing and wheezing until tears streamed down their cheeks. He swallows a lump that rises in his throat.

“Street Life?” he says.

“Sure.”

This one has Rain on lead vocals. He’d protested when Leon first suggested it, but finally relented after a steady stream of encouragement, coaxing, and kisses.

“Wish everybody would leave me alone, yeah. They’re always calling on my telephone. When I pick it up there’s no one there, so I walk outside just to take the air.”

They use a simple beat from the synth to keep time; they’ll dub drums in later. Rain bends over the guitar during his feature, swaying as he connects with the music, and Leon thinks of the first moment he’d realized Rain was more than just a fleeting desire, watching him move hypnotically on the stage at Saratoga.

“Hey good-looking boys, gather around. The sidewalk papers gutter-press you down. All those lies can be so unkind, they can make you feel like you’re losing your mind.”

They’re the most suggestive lyrics the two have written yet, a middle-ground between Leon’s flamboyant style and Rain’s more reserved one. Anyone who doesn’t guess Rain’s sexuality after this would have to be completely oblivious. Not that it will matter too much longer. “After this,” Rain has told him. “This will be the catalyst.”

They make it through four songs, the time slipping away without either noticing. When at last they break, exhaustion slams into Leon like a truck and he stumbles, catching himself on the microphone stand.

Rain is at his side in a heartbeat. “Let’s get you to bed.”

Leon forces himself upright, shaking his head. “Couch.” Rain nods and gets under Leon’s arm.

“I told Skye and Simon I could rehearse tonight,” he says once Leon is draped with a blanket, propped up on a pile of throw pillows. “But I’ll call Simon and cancel. Who fucking knows if Skye even would have showed up anyway.”

It takes a few tries for Leon to make his voice work. “No. You’re here all the time, you need to go do something else for once.” He sinks into the cushions, closes his eyes, then jolts awake from the doze he’d slipped into in less than a second. “Sorrento is coming over soon, and you don’t want to just sit here watching me take a nap.”

For a moment Rain looks like he will argue, but finally nods. He kisses Leon before he goes, holding his face in both hands and pressing their lips together hard. “I’ll be back after.”

Leon does his best to grin. “I’ll just be here.” He closes his eyes again, and is unconscious before Rain even lets go.

***

He’s awoken by someone gently shaking his shoulder. Confusion: why is it dark out? Sorrento’s face slowly comes into focus.

“Something’s wrong.” He gives Leon his arm, helps him sit up and swing his feet to the floor.

His head is fuzzy with sleep. “I…” He struggles to lick dry lips with an equally dry tongue. “Um. What?”

“It’s Rain. Something’s wrong. Come on.”

Shaking off the remnants of his nap, he pushes the blanket aside and follows Sorrento out of the conversation pit. Rain is in the foyer, just outside the elevator. He looks shellshocked, his mouth hanging open, his eyes staring, unfocused and glassy.

“Rain?” Leon takes his love’s hands in his own, then gently touches his cheek. “Rain.”

His gaze stays somewhere beyond Leon, and his voice, when he speaks, is distant and dreamy. “It’s Simon.” At last, his eyes find Leon’s, and within them is a bottomless ocean of agony and exhaustion and terror. “He’s got it too.”


	47. Solidarity

Once upon a time, Leon’s penthouse apartment was a huge, empty place, steel and glass and plush carpeting, a clutter of drug paraphernalia, and not much more. Occasionally he’d throw a party, filling the living room with dancers and the kitchen with cocaine and booze, piling spaced-out overnight guests into the spare bedrooms and choosing several to bring into his own. But much of the time it was nothing but a luxurious, grandiose echo chamber.

Now, suddenly, it teems with life. Simon and Enrique have moved into the front bedroom, and Sorrento into the back one. Another bed has been hastily set up in the maid’s room – yet another space Leon has never used – and taken by Diego. No-one is ever alone here anymore.

Diego stocks the kitchen, and one day real food simply starts appearing out of it, meatloafs and mashed potatoes, roasted chicken and steamed broccoli, oatmeal and pancakes and endless pots of tea.

“When did you learn to cook?” The ten-person dining table is in regular use for the first time in its life.

Diego shrugs. “When I had to start taking care of myself.” If Leon ever ventured in to look, he’d find a copy of the Good Housekeeping cookbook on the countertop, riddled with torn paper bookmarks.

Somehow amidst the tumult of rehearsals and performances and life in general, Leon forgot that Enrique is still a medical student, and that bartending was always just a gig on the side. He becomes the household advisor, teaching Sorrento and Diego to manage the medications he steals from the lab.

The doctor Sorrento finally made contact with comes occasionally as well, writing prescriptions for anti-nausea meds and codeine. He gives them the name of a pharmacist, another deeply-closeted gay man who will be discreet.

“We should tell people,” Sorrento says. Leon shakes his head. He no longer wants the public eye on him. It’s a strange feeling. “You can be the face of this thing,” Sorrento presses. “Get people to stand up, pay some fucking attention.”

“Tell them later. Tell them…” They still don’t want to speak the words aloud.  _Tell them after I’m gone_.

They spend Christmas curled up in his home theater, a wedge-shaped room of leather sofas and wall-mounted speakers, a VCR and rear-projection screen, nowhere near true theater-sized but impressive nonetheless. Leon wonders when exactly this kind of excess had started seeming important to him.

“I don’t think I’m really following this,” he whispers to Rain, lounging against his side. “Why does the guy in the mask – ”

“Darth Vader.”

“Sure. Why does he want to blow up the planet?”

“… He just does, okay? He’s the villain, that’s what they do.”

“But – ”

“Just watch the movie.” Rain pokes him in the ribs and Leon winces, sucking in a breath through his teeth. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”

Simon leans over to whisper to him. “I don’t really get it either.” The two share a tiny smile of understanding.

 _Funny_ , Leon muses,  _how dying together really breeds solidarity_.


	48. One Night Only

In January, something happens. He wakes up one day, and feels good. Great, even. The pain is less, and he’s suddenly full of energy. When it hasn’t gone away a couple days later he tells Sorrento to book him and Rain at the club.

“I don’t know…”

“Please. Let us have this. It might be…” He takes a deep breath and says it. “It might be our only chance.”

***

“ONE NIGHT ONLY!” the marquee proclaims. “LEON, with Urban Renaissance’s RAIN!”

Backstage, they twine hands. Rain is gorgeous tonight in a black jacket and white shirt with lace at the collar and cuffs, and boots with a row of silver studs lining the upper edge. His wig is black as well, but a black that shows blue undertones in the stage lights. Leon wears something like his old disco outfit, but toned down: straight-legged white pants and a looser shirt tucked in at the waist. He’s still got the shades and medallion, of course. Those bits of disco will never die.

“If you get tired…”

“Sorrento has a stool waiting in the wings. But I’m going to be okay. There’s a rush you get on stage. It’s almost like being high.”

Rain’s hands go to his chest, slipping into the open shirt and stroking his skin. Leon remembers the time he tried to break up with Rain here, the boy’s stubborn refusal and their ensuing passionate embrace. Was that only a few months ago? It seems like a lifetime.

On an impulse he pushes Rain against the countertop and runs his hands down his body, reaching behind him to cup his ass cheeks. There’s no time, but he presses his hips into Rain’s anyway, kissing him until they both harden.

“Leon…” His lover’s eyes are full of heat mingled with pain. Leon traces one eyebrow with his thumb, brushes the eyelid with his lips when it closes.

“Come on, love,” he whispers. “Let’s go show them we’re great.”


	49. Crash

“Thrush,” the doctor says, shining a light into Leon’s mouth. “Unfortunately there’s nothing I can really do for it. Don’t smoke. Avoid spicy foods and alcohol.”

All things Leon is already doing. The thick white coating that’s taken over his tongue makes eating an agony, smoking impossible, drinking a chore. He takes small sips of water through a straw, trying to get it as far back in his mouth as possible. Simon is suffering from it too, and Rain goes between one and the other, coaxing them into bites of cold cream of wheat, bland but the least painful food they’ve found.

The high that had carried him through the show lasted another week, then out of nowhere he crashed hard, unable even to get out of bed, every joint on fire. The intestinal infection that started all of this came back with a vengeance, and Diego and Sorrento have learned in a hurry to deal with bed pans when they can’t carry him to the bathroom fast enough.

Not that the carrying is so difficult. He’s dropping more weight every day.

“ _Nothing?_ ” Sorrento’s voice is full of barely-contained fury. “This isn’t more ‘helpless doctor’ bullshit?”

“I haven’t done that to you yet. Why would you think I’d start now?” Dr. Phillips peels off the rubber gloves he wears whenever he touches Leon or Simon. “I know you’re scared and frustrated. Believe me when I tell you I’m doing everything I can to help.” He pulls out his prescription pad. “I can give him more penicillin for the infections. But they’re going to keep coming back.”

“We’ll take whatever will help,” Diego says.

“Not that anyone asked me,” Leon croaks, “but I agree.”

Rain joins them, returning from checking on Simon. He slides carefully onto the bed next to Leon and gently wipes his forehead with a towel. Lately he’s been sweating buckets, despite being constantly cold. Rain picks up the water glass with its straw from the night stand. “Drink.” He puts a hand under Leon’s head and helps him raise it enough for a few swallows.

“I’ll go see Simon,” Dr. Phillips says, handing a few prescriptions to Diego, and Sorrento follows him out of the room.

Diego perches on the chair that’s now ever-present on the side of the bed where Leon sleeps. “Do you want to roll over?”

His back is sore from lying on it for so long. He knows his side will just get sore before long as well, but nods anyway. At least it’s temporary relief.

Between them Diego and Rain move him slowly onto his side, facing his son. Rain rubs his back softly, mindful of his aching joints.

“How’s Simon?”

“Better than you. He’s out on the couch with Enrique.”

“That fucker.” He tries to laugh, and it turns into a cough instead. It’s like a giant hand squeezing his chest.

“I knew you shouldn’t have done the show,” Diego says.

Leon feels his jaw set, a faint echo of the attitude he used to give everyone. “Fuck that.” He coughs again, groans, and feels Rain’s hands brace his ribcage. “I’d rather have that than a few extra days to lay here doing jack shit.”

For a while nobody says anything. Finally Diego stands up, his eyes shining. “I should go get these filled.”

“I’ve got him,” Rain says, moving his hand to Leon’s waist.

Diego nods and leans over his father. “I’ll be back soon.” He hesitates, then adds, “Dad.”


	50. One Last Time

He dreams.

Diego, a tawny-skinned baby with chubby legs, his head already thick with the curls his father gave him in the deep rich brown his Puerto Rican mother did. Leon holds the child he never knew, confused but awed, his heart bursting with the love he has for his own mother but magnified by the thousands.

Alan Laurent, the first boy he kissed, a key finally sliding into the lock that fit.

Being on stage with his mother and step-father, learning jazz and blues at their side. The son he also would have introduced to the stage if he’d had the chance.

Hearing disco for the first time and knowing he’d found his home, the beat addictive, the horns tugging at the heartstrings of his youth. Watching men dance to it and wanting to fuck them all. Realizing he could seduce as many as he wanted with his own moves.

The elation of his star rising, fame and money and drugs and sex. He lights up the stage at Studio 54, both before the shutdown and after its reopening. Steve Rubell handing out drugs like candy, the nights of glitter and glitz and glamour, blurring into a haze of coke and ludes and alcohol. Walking on clouds and stardust.

The loneliness he never felt creeping in as the years went by.

The boy who finally ended that loneliness, filling his life and his soul with love. They’re at Saratoga, the place he will treasure for as many days as remain to him. Rain teases and ignores him, drawing his attention like a magnet. Their “perfect frozen moment,” the one that will live forever.

Even after his own moments have all run out.

He awakens with a start. The sheets he lies on are drenched in his own sweat. Behind him Rain snores softly.

Slowly, painstakingly, he rolls himself over to face his lover, his love. Heavy curtains blanket the room in near-blackness, but a faint halo of light outlines Rain’s face. Leon reaches for him and he jolts awake in an instant. “Leon?”

He finds Rain’s waist with his hand. “Come here.” Rain hesitates, then snuggles into Leon’s open arm.

They’d made love after their show, recapturing the passion of their first encounters, then again in the week that followed. But since his downhill slide Rain has handled him like a porcelain doll, a piece of spun glass, a fragile soap bubble that will pop if he touches it too hard.

Leon takes Rain’s hand and moves it to his cock. Rain’s hand flinches away and Leon presses it firmly. Feels himself begin to stir.

“Are you sure?”

“Touch me. Let me touch you.”

Rain’s hand stays stiff and flat a moment longer, then slowly wraps around Leon’s cock. His fingers stroke gently, teasing him to life. Leon runs his hand up Rain’s body, feels him shudder, then quake with a sob. He shifts to caress Rain’s face, wiping away the tears he finds.

“I’m sorry, my love. My dear one. I’m sorry for all of this.”

Rain quivers in the darkness. “I’m not,” he says, his voice choked with emotion. “Not for one single second I’ve had with you.”

Leon places his hand on Rain’s cock and the boy presses into it with a moan. He can’t take his lover as he once did, sinking into him, Rain moving to match the thrust of his hips. But he can touch him here, like this. Their lips find each other in the dark, and Leon kisses the salt from Rain’s. He knows the map of his lover’s body, reads the tempo of his gasps, holds him when he comes.

Once he catches his breath, Rain puts his hand on Leon’s shoulder, pushing him insistently onto his back. It’s too painful for Leon to spread his legs, so Rain kneels at his side instead. His tongue is no more than a butterfly kiss at first, growing firmer as Leon registers no pain. Finally he takes him fully into his mouth, still careful, still bracing his hands on the mattress, but giving him all he has to give, accepting all that Leon is.

“Rain,” he whispers. “Oh, Rain…”

He doesn’t come hard. It’s a soft flutter, and he’s not even certain whether anything fills Rain’s mouth. But peace suffuses him, and the fear that has been his constant companion for months now fades away. He holds his arms out to Rain and the boy – his beautiful boy – stretches out at his side and lays his head carefully on Leon’s chest. He smooths Rain’s hair. “Thank you.”

“Leon…”

“Shh. Let this be one more. One more perfect moment. One…”

Rain’s chest shakes, and he sniffles.

“One last time,” Leon says. He settles Rain’s head into the space just below his shoulder, where it won’t grow heavy on him, and wipes his love’s tears away again. He stays awake until Rain’s shudders quiet and his breathing grows smooth.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers once more, and lets sleep overtake him.


	51. Rain: The End

It ends in April.

***

Leon can no longer eat. His lips are dry and cracked, his tongue swollen and white, his face pocked with open sores. Rain dribbles water onto his lips, can’t tell for certain whether any of it makes it into his mouth.

Pneumonia has settled deep in his lungs, racking his chest with harsh dry coughs that leave him curled around himself and Rain’s own chest aching to hear it. He has bedsores as well, open weeping wounds on arms and legs, covering so much of him it’s impossible to lay him in a position where none of them touch the sheets.

“He has a few days,” Dr. Phillips tells them. “I can give you some morphine. You’ll need to inject it straight into his veins.”

“I can do that,” Enrique says. Rain squeezes his hand. They’re both run ragged, caring for both Simon and Leon. Leon will go first, but Simon won’t be far behind.

***

He spends two days in a morphine-induced fog, asleep most of the time and unaware the rest of it. Rain sits at his bedside and slips his fingers under Leon’s, not even daring to squeeze his hand.

On the third day Leon suddenly emerges from the haze, his eyes focusing on Rain. He’s on no less morphine, but somehow the very last of him breaks through. Rain thinks he tries to speak, but it comes out a scratchy croak. He takes up water in the straw and lets it slowly into the corner of Leon’s mouth.

“Diego,” he calls urgently. “Sorrento. Enrique.”

They hurry in, and from their expressions Rain knows that they know.

Leon swallows and slides his eyes toward the water glass.

“More?”

He gives a nearly-imperceptible nod. Rain gives him another strawful, then one more before Leon turns his head away. He parts his lips, licks them with the tip of his tongue.

“Come – ” he begins, then breaks off to cough. It’s become no more than a hoarse rattle. “Come… hold me.”

Carefully, so carefully, Rain crawls next to him on the bed. Diego takes his place in the bedside chair, and Sorrento sits on the edge of the mattress, laying a hand just above Leon’s knee.

Leon struggles to take a breath. “Let him leave,” Enrique says softly.

Diego takes his father’s hand and bends over to kiss it, the lightest brush of lips on knuckles. “It’s okay, Dad. You can go.”

Leon’s body is frail as a bird in Rain’s arms, fragile bones beneath paper-thin skin, his heartbeat a weak flutter in his breast. He touches his forehead to Leon’s cheek, as Leon had once done to him under the stars of Saratoga, asking for his poetry. Words well up, but none of them are enough to hold a lifetime of love and fights and laughter and tears and music that could have been. Should have been.

“I’m just going to – ” Leon coughs again. “I’m just… going to… close my eyes. For…” He fades out, and Rain’s heart stands still. “For a minute,” he says at last.

“Leon,” Rain whispers, and he says the words. The only words there are, and he fills them with everything there’s no more time to say. “I love you.”

But Leon never replies.


	52. Rain's Song

They find it inside the notebook he left lying on the keyboard. Leon’s handwriting is shaky, but still recognizable.

There’s no title, but none of them doubt who it is meant for.

_I hear the drizzle of the rain_   
_Like a memory it falls_   
_Soft and warm continuing_   
_Tapping on my roof and walls_

_My mind’s distracted and diffused_   
_My thoughts are many miles away_   
_They lie with you when you’re asleep_   
_And kiss you when you start your day_

_And a song I was writing is left undone_   
_I don’t know why I spend my time_   
_Writing songs I can’t believe_   
_With words that tear and strain to rhyme_

_And so you see I have come to doubt_   
_All that I once held as true_   
_I stand alone without beliefs_   
_The only truth I know is you_

_And as I watch the drops of rain_   
_Weave their weary paths and die_   
_I know that I am like the rain_   
_There but for the grace of you go I_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made allowances within the game for characters to use real-world songs / lyrics as their own. All songs are used without permission.
> 
> “Kathy’s Song” © Paul Simon, 1963.


	53. The Land of the Free

The national anthem plays again at Saratoga in 1983. There are fewer smiling faces in the crowd. This is no longer a carefree group of gathered friends.

These are people touched by tragedy.

Mr. T turns begins his annual greeting. “Welcome back to the party, everyone! And thanks for coming out this year.”

The words are the same, yet the inflection is subtly different. There are faces missing. Well-known ones.

And some of the familiar ones have changed. There’s a gold rhinestone medallion on a thick chain around Sorrento’s neck, gaudy, heavy, and utterly out of place with his black leather jacket and aviator sunglasses. But he’s never seen without it anymore.

Rain wears as much black as ever, including a short messy black wig entirely unlike the curly white ones he used to favor. The glitter around his eyes has been replaced with thick black streaks, but his lips are left plain. His expression is flat, his eyes holding none of the dancing, teasing amusement from years past.

Diego stands with Kim, their arms around each other. Perhaps something has happened there.

“I don’t know all of you nearly as well as I should,” Mr. T says, “but I hope to fix that before the end of the night.”

There’s a cheer, but smaller than last year. Subdued.

“Take care of each other,” Mr. T says, and takes a breath, giving the words new meaning. “And clean up after yourselves. I’m not your daddy; if you want that, talk to Steven.”

He looks at Steven, who takes a step away from the flagpole. “There’s going to be a memorial service at the fire pit tonight at midnight. We’ll be making luminaries for the deceased, and folks can say a few words. For Simon.” He swallows and glances down for a second. “And for Leon.” He nods at Mr. T, who steps up to join him.

“This is still a party,” he says. “So let’s have some fun!”


	54. Mad World

Enrique looks shy on the stage. He picks up the microphone. “I want to thank Rain and Skye for helping me with this. This… this is for Simon.” He nods to Tony for playback.

A hollow, echoing guitar line picks out the opening notes. “One song. Glory. One song, before I go. Glory, one song to leave behind.” The beginning is slow and sweet, and if Enrique’s voice lacks for anything in quality, nobody can tell for the emotion he fills it with. “Find one song, one last refrain. Glory, from the pretty boy front man who wasted opportunity.”

The song moves into a faster section, and Rain’s playing is unmistakable in the track. “Find the one song before the virus takes hold. Glory, like a sunset. One song to redeem this empty life. Time flies, and then no need to endure anymore! Time dies…” Enrique looks down as the music fades, and raises a hand to swipe his eyes. “Thank you,” he says to the audience, and returns the mike to its stand.

Francis takes the stage as Miss Demeanor, a new drag queen. The audience is hushed as she reaches plaintively to the heavens, then folds her arms around herself to the words of Madonna: “Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone. I hear you call my name, and it feels like home.”

Abner stands up, radiating fury that fills the room. “This is  _bullshit_ ,” he says. “Our friends are dying, and the doctors are doing nothing, and the government is doing  _nothing_ , and this is all  _bullshit_.” He opens his black poetry book, and his anger focuses into a laser beam, awesome and terrifying to behold.

“Jacob,” he snarls. “Which would have another name, were it not covered up in fear, and filth, and cowardice, and shame.” He stalks across the stage, his poetry spit from his lips like acid-tipped darts, and where they land people gasp and cry.

“Once a man wrestled with God  
He found a name, founded a nation, fathered a tradition, birthed a religion  
But I will birth no children, I will found no tradition  
And in one year I have seen my nation wasted  
Pus marked, poxed, beauty of youth and dignity of age stolen  
Stripped of home, of dignity, and denied their own life’s truth  
And when we cry for mercy and give our submission  
We are told that what we are is a sin best blotted away.”

When he reaches the final lines, he faces square to the audience, speaking with quiet intensity that builds and builds and builds.

“Every day the clock is still ticking  
Every day I am still breathing  
Every day our hearts are still beating  
And all of the dead and all of the dreaming  
Have lost all their meaning  
For the truth is, this ends in stacked coffins  
My family fled in front of tanks, my father  
Ensured his son would know what the start  
Of a genocide looks like.”

A long pause, an angry breath.

“ _I refuse_.”

He looks down at last, then back out at them with a fallen face. “This poem has no ending.”

Reginald, the dancer, whirls like a half-starved dervish until he collapses, his anorexic body unable to sustain itself any longer. Enrique and Jerrod rush to the stage and carry him behind the curtain, while Lady Verona steps right over his prone form to make her appearance. She is a trainwreck: stumbling and swaying on her heels, eyes half-lidded and dilated, missing half her lip-sync, replacing the words with a vague, drugged-out smile.

Finally the show comes to the closing act. Rain wheels out a keyboard; his guitar is nowhere to be seen. He sets the keyboard, then steps in front of the mike.

“We’re Urban Renaissance.” His tone is flat and hollow, his expression empty. He motions one arm half-heartedly toward the audience. “Move these fucking benches.” He returns to the keyboard and launches into a sparse and simple piano intro.

“All around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces. Bright and early for their daily races, going nowhere, going nowhere.” Skye gazes into the distance, somewhere beyond the walls, somewhere beyond the heavens.

“Their tears are filling up their glasses. No expression, no expression.” His voice is husky and mournful. “Hide my head, I wanna drown my sorrow. No tomorrow, no tomorrow.”

Only a single extra beat is added to the piano line, a fifth above the root played on two and four, but it’s like a candle lit in a dark room, one point of light to cling to.

“I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad. The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had. I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take. When people run in circles it’s a very very… mad world. Mad world.”

Skye steps away from the microphone and Rain’s fingers take up a countermelody, achingly beautiful and complex. His pelvis rocks and thrusts at the keyboard, and there’s no doubt in the audience’s mind that he is making love to Simon’s memory.

“Mad world,” Skye croons into the mike. “Mad world. Mad world. Mad world.” The piano fades out, and only Skye’s voice lingers mournfully in the air.

Rain turns around and walks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made allowances within the game for characters to use real-world songs / lyrics as their own. All songs are used without permission.
> 
> “One Song Glory” © Jonathan Larson, 1996.  
> “Like a Prayer” © Madonna and Patrick Leonard, 1989.  
> “Mad World” © Roland Orzabal, 1982.


	55. Luminaries

At eleven forty-five, Steven walks outside. People lounge on the benches around the fire pit, talking, laughing, kissing. The sounds of sex float in from the surrounding darkness, bodies writhing somewhere beyond the firelight’s reach.

The tables where candles and markers and white paper bags have been laid out stand empty.

“What the fuck?” he says, nearly to himself, then raises his voice. “WHAT. THE.  _FUCK!_ ”

Surprised faces look up, stare at him.

“What are you people  _doing?_  Do you have  _any idea_  what is happening around you?”

He stomps down the porch steps and into the fire ring. “Simon was my friend. My brother. AND I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT INSTRUMENT HE PLAYED!” He takes a deep breath and continues bellowing. “No one told his brothers he was dying because they DIDN’T KNOW WE  _EXISTED!_ ”

He’s panting now, but can’t seem to stop. The faces around him look chagrined, and more have begin drifting in from the darkness, from the main cabin.

“We live in too many fucking closets. People are passing out on stage, and you just ignore it. ‘ _The show must go on._ ‘ ‘ _It’s all we have_.’ ‘ _Put it in a FUCKING CLOSET._ ‘

“Well, this is  _not_  all we have. WE ARE MORE THAN JUST A PARTY. We all promised we were going to make luminaries to honor our friends at midnight.” He holds up the wrist wearing his watch. “Well that’s in ten minutes and no one has made a  _single one_. Because we just PUT IT IN THE FUCKING CLOSET and go  _PARTY_.”

He turns in a slow circle, his face purple with rage, and everyone his glare falls on shrinks away. “So come out of your closets, do your  _fucking job_  and _HONOR YOUR FRIENDS!_ ”

He grabs a white bag and a marker, and works around the places where the paper becomes spotted with tears.

***

Luminaries cover every surface, a flickering golden-white halo surrounding the fire ring. One by one their creators come forward, speak a few words, and lay them in the fire.

Steven holds his, and his remaining brothers – Andrew, Walter, and Chain – stand behind him with their own in their hands. He stares for a moment into the fire. “This is for Leon, and for Simon.” A beat. “Simon played keyboard.” He drops his luminary into the fire; the rest of his words have already been spoken.

“For Simon and Leon,” say Andrew and Walter. Chain lingers another moment. “Leon… You’ll always be the king.”

“To the motherfucking king of disco,” Mr. T says as he tosses his bag into the fire. Others echo him: “To the king.”

Katherine picks up her paper bag. “We are family,” she says, stepping to the fireside. She looks around at everyone gathered. “So  _fucking act like it_.”

More come forward, and more. Words for Simon, words for Leon, words for them all. Some simply drop their bag into the fire, too overcome to speak.

Rain steps out of the crowd, Skye at his elbow. “Leon… You’re already among the stars. So Simon, this is for you, to find your way there too.” He drops the bag and turns away again.

When Sorrento comes forward he has no luminary. Instead he holds a pair of fuzzy, zebra-striped, mile-high platform shoes.

“These were Leon’s shoes. These happen to be the ones he wore here last year, but I have more. Does anyone want any? Seriously. I have closets full of these fucking things. I don’t know why anyone would ever need this many shoes. Even a man as gay as Leon.” A small chuckle ripples throughout the gathering.

Sorrento lowers the shoes and puts a hand under the medallion around his neck, presenting it to the firelight. “This was Leon’s medallion, and there’s only one. Thank God.” Another chuckle. “Because… Because this is more weight than anyone should have to bear.” He closes his fist around it and squeezes it tight. “I wear this to remember him. To keep him with me. And to remind me: this fight is only beginning.”

He releases the medallion and looks slowly around the fire ring, taking in every face. “ _We_  are dying,” he says. “We are dying, more of us every day, and  _we_  are the only ones who care. Don’t forget Simon. Don’t forget Leon. Don’t forget a single person we lose to this  _fucking_  disease. And don’t let  _them_  – ” He jabs an angry finger to the world beyond Saratoga. ” – forget about  _us_.”

He glares at them all for a long moment, and no one says a word. Finally he looks back down at the fire. “This is for Leon. Long live the fucking king.”


	56. The Home of the Brave

Sorrento sits down at a table, behind the ongoing luminary service. Some of those gathered are still speaking.

Diane joins him on the bench. “What size are those shoes?”

“You know, I don’t even know.” He reaches inside, looking for a size tag. “What’s this?” His hand comes out holding a wad of paper. “It was stuffed in the toe.”

He and Diane look at each other. “You don’t think…” Diane begins.

“Oh my god,” Sorrento says, and starts laughing. “Leon had tiny feet!” The laughter turns into great guffaws, shaking him until he gasps for breath and tears stream down his cheeks. “Don’t tell anyone,” he says when he finally regains his breath. “I don’t think he would have wanted anyone to know.”

Diane makes a zipping motion over her lips.

When the luminaries finally finish, Pen and Mr. T begin handing out sparklers. Sorrento and Diane rejoin the circle standing in the firelight. Lighters make their way around, and sparks flare to life. But this year nobody dances, or twirls, or draws glowing trails in the sky. Instead they stay in their circle, the sparklers burning down and guttering out.

It begins with Diane. “O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light.” Her voice is high and rich, a voice meant for Broadway. She sings slowly, giving life to each individual syllable.

Francis joins her: “What so proudly we hailed, at the twilight’s last gleaming?” Then Sorrento adds his voice: “Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight.” It spreads, the melody taken up one at a time by every person it touches. “O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.”

This is no song to celebrate America. This is not the tune sung unthinkingly by baseball fans and bored schoolchildren. Nor a tortured rendition full of unnecessary added notes and embellishments, a performance intended to impress and outdo.

This is a cry in the dark by an abandoned people. A plea for mercy from a ravaging disease and an uncaring world. A hand held blindly out, in desperate hope that another will find it. Defiant bravery in the face of the endless night.

_And the rockets’ red glare,_   
_The bombs bursting in air,_   
_Gave proof through the night_   
_That our flag was still there_

_O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave_   
_O’er the land of the free,_   
_And the home of the brave?_


	57. Those Who Remain

In the years to come, more faces will fade away. Trevor, the aspiring actor and dancer who started bartending at Studio 54, will have his life’s thread cut off just as he begins to become known. Kimberly will leave her dearest friends, Katherine and Santiago, to take solace in each others’ arms, and her one real love, Charlotte, with only regrets for the pain they’d caused each other.

Abner’s students will finish what he does not. A note bearing the inscription “You do not leave flowers for poets immortal. Words in granite do better justice” will be lowered with him into his grave. His words will long outlive him, though “We live, we die, we remain” will become the rallying cry of a generation that does not know Jerrod penned it in Abner’s name.

The Congressman and The Queen will publicly declare their love, only to find their world cracked open as Nate succumbs to disease, and Sinclair begs death to take claim him now too, instead of waiting for his own diagnosis to take its terrible toll.

More names: Nick, Steven, Max, Eli. Howard will take his own life rather than give death his due. Too many names. Too many lives. Too many, too many, too many.

Rain will go on. He will keep his promise to Leon and come out publicly after Urban Renaissance gets their big break. Their first number one single, “Dancer in the Dark,” will be widely recognized as a tribute to all those who have died in the epidemic, and by a select few as influenced by the old disco hit “I Was Made for Dancin’.”

Sorrento will blaze bright for as long as his star remains in the sky. He will work tirelessly as a city councilman to change laws that bar the life partners of the dying from being at their sides, laws that allow hospitals to deny help to those in need, laws that give employers free reign to terminate employees with a diagnosis. When he passes from the world, he will be remembered as a hero for the damned.

Diego will devote what remains of his life to giving and teaching palliative care to others, in hopes that he will receive it when his time comes. His clock is ticking.

Enrique, with the help of the wealthy and influential pillars of the gay community, will open the Simon Center, a clinic for all in need. They will do everything they can, strain every resource, and demand the world from their volunteers, who will give bottomlessly. It will still never be enough.

And he and Rain will realize, in time, the love that has grown between them as they have stared down death together over the years. They will hold each other, finding and taking the moments they can in the eye of the endless hurricane.

Somewhere, Leon and Simon will smile on them both.


	58. Epilogue: Ghosts

In an imagined world, the friends of the Saratoga parties gather in the sunlight on the steps of the main cabin. Those who have departed walk among them once more.

“Wait,” Abner says. “Leon isn’t here yet.”

They don’t see him as he steps out of the cabin. They are turned away, looking at the camera set up before them.

“I believe I heard my name.”

Faces turn, then do double-takes. He is as he was the night he tasted glory, the night he found love. Shining gold and violet, sparkling in the sun. Walking high on the shoes that brought tears to so many, wearing the medallion that has become both Sorrento’s touchstone and his albatross.

He grins at them. “Make way for the fucking king.”

And he takes his place among them, where he belongs. Where he has always belonged.

The camera snaps.

Later, after the film is bathed in water and phenidone and acetic acid and ammonium thiosulfate, hung to dry and projected onto paper coated with silver halide, Morgan will see… the ghosts of the past are gone.


End file.
